k2pdfopt is a free cross platform command line utility which you can use to optimize PDF documents when they need to be displayed on small screens like the ones found on smartphones or ebook readers. This is a command line PDF optimizer, which means that you’re gonna have to go through a bit of command training before you can start optimizing PDF documents.
List of letters which you can see on the screenshot below are actually features of k2pdfopt. With the help of these letters you’re gonna setup a PDF optimization command which is gonna be perfect for whatever screen size the device where you would like to read PDF documents has.
Similar software: PDF Reducer, Benubird PDF.
This makes the optimization process somewhat more easier, the only thing that you need to do is go through what each one of these commands means and once that the ultimate command is setup, type in the name of the PDF document that you’d like to be optimized and hit Enter. Key features of k2pdfopt – free small screen PDF optimization software are:
- Free and lightweight – it’s less than 10MB in size, low resource usage
- PDF document optimization – shrinks and make small screen reading easier
- Comes with device presets – Kindle 2, Nook, Kindle DX, Paperweight
- Custom screen size – allows you to set arbitrary screen height and weight
- Color negative output – switches the colors – easier for night reading
- Contrast/Sharpen – allows you to apply contrast and sharpen PDFs
- Landscape mode – optimization for landscaped PDF documents
- Adjustable margins, spacing, text wrapping, page range optimization, etc.
- Portable – works without installation – just click and run
- Cross platform – works on Linux, Windows, Mac OS and ARM devices
Pretty much anyone who has tried reading PDF documents on small screens probably know that for some documents it’s impossible to do that. Font is either too small, a lot of space is wasted alongside the edges so you’re stuck zooming in and out to find that spot where reading is possible only to find that when flipping through pages, view needs to be readjusted each time because it gets out of focus of the text. Here’s how you can fix that with this free PDF optimization software.
How to optimize PDF documents for small screens with k2pdfopt
Drag and drop the PDF document that you would like to optimize onto the k2pdfopt executable.
The selected options line is where you can see all the options from the list above that you’ve already added. Type the letters of the tools and features that you’d like to apply during optimization from the list above. When you’re done, like we already said, click Enter.
Conclusion
k2pdfopt is a very powerful application and even though it doesn’t have a graphical interface, it’s easy to setup. Example of a converted text can be seen on the image above. Notice that text is all the way to the document edge and it’s very big, just what it needs to be so it can be read on small screens.
