Creating ZIP files
Hi all 
Other than buying a full version of Stuffit, is there a way I can create a zip file? I am looking for freeware solutions only for the present.
I could create an archive by marking all the files, right-clicking and click on 'create archive' but that does not compress the files. I need something that will work like Winzip on Windows, compress and create a zip file.
I checked Version Tracker, but there seem to be a few freeware apps that look like they have been abandoned, like ZIPIT fcor example. Is ZIPIT good enough for my purpose?
Thanks and cheers

Other than buying a full version of Stuffit, is there a way I can create a zip file? I am looking for freeware solutions only for the present.
I could create an archive by marking all the files, right-clicking and click on 'create archive' but that does not compress the files. I need something that will work like Winzip on Windows, compress and create a zip file.
I checked Version Tracker, but there seem to be a few freeware apps that look like they have been abandoned, like ZIPIT fcor example. Is ZIPIT good enough for my purpose?
Thanks and cheers
Comments
Originally posted by tilt
I could create an archive by marking all the files, right-clicking and click on 'create archive' but that does not compress the files. I need something that will work like Winzip on Windows, compress and create a zip file.
But that does create a compressed zip file.
What are you trying to compress? JPEGs don't compress very well, if at all, since they are compressed already.
Cheers
Originally posted by tilt
Thanks for the quick response JLL. I was trying to compress a few PDFs that I created. The combined size of the 11 PDFs was the same as the ZIP archive. Are PDFs too already compressed like JPEGs?
Cheers
They can be.
Beware, some of the compression is done such that you lose some information, so it's not completely lossless. Try it out. Depending on how you created the PDFs and what's in them, you might gain a lot, or not at all.
zip output.name.zip input.name
in the Terminal.
Apple's "Make Archive" menu item uses BOMArchiver, not zip, so this might have different compression.
Example:
zip ~/Documents/foo.zip ~/Documents/foo.pdf
then check the file sizes. I just tested it and it reduced a PDF by only 9%.
Lundy, I come from CP/M and MS-DOS and a little Linux, so I am not scared of the CLI. Thanks for the tip. I shall try that out.
Drumstick, thanks. I tried Colorsync and it did not do anything to reduce the file size. I guess probably like JLL and you said, PDFs are not that easy to compress. BTW I created the PDFs by printing TIFF files of documents that I had scanned.
Sladuuch, one of my questions was that on Versiontracker there are so many utilities to deal with zip files and I wanted opinions from more experienced users as to which the better ones were. You suggest Dropstuff. I can try that out, however I think I shall go with Lundy's suggestion of using the CLI
Thank you all for your help
Cheers
Originally posted by tilt
BTW I created the PDFs by printing TIFF files of documents that I had scanned.
*bing bing bing*
I'll bet you anything they were compressed TIFFs. That's the norm. The TIFF gets placed inside the PDF wrapper intact, so you had a PDF wrapper around an already compressed image. Trying to compress it further isn't going to do much of anything.
Cheers