I have been using both PDFCreator and PrimoPDF for 3+ years. I mainly use them as a PDF converter and a virtual printer. I personally like PDFCreator most. But PrimoPDF can handle/convert some Web pages that PDFCreator cannot. To me, they both compensate each other. However, I have never paid attention to the PDF file size generated by them until recently. PDFCreator definitely is the winner. If anyone looks for a good PDF compression tool, I would highly recommend PDFCreator.
The following table presents you the file sizes generated by PDFCreator, PrimoPDF and GIRAC freewares from Microsoft WORD 2003 which doesn't contain images.
| MS WORD 2003 with no image | 73KB |
| PDFCreator | 35KB |
| PrimoPDF | 124KB |
| GIRAC | 123KB |
As you can see, PDFCreator file size optimization is the champion.
Updated on Jan 27, 2011:
Today I need to convert a document from WORD to PDF. The document is embedded with a tiny image. I used both PDFCreator and PrimoPDF for comparison to see which one does a better job. As expected, the PDF by PDFCreator results in very small size. But this time, the PDF made by PrimoPDF is a bit huge.
| MS WORD 2003 embedded with a tiny image | 69.5 KB (71,168 bytes) |
| PDFCreator | 47.2 KB (48,388 bytes) |
| PrimoPDF | 1.18 MB (1,245,833 bytes) |