Compress a PDF
Shrink a PDF to get under an upload or e-mail limit — keeping the text, or cutting harder when the file is a scan.
Two methods
Keeps the text
Rewrites the file's structure and drops the metadata. Text stays selectable and searchable. The saving is modest — sometimes zero.
Turns pages into images
Each page is redrawn as a JPEG at the resolution you pick. Scans shrink a lot, but the text can no longer be selected, searched or read aloud.
When it pays off
Scanned documents
A scan is already a picture of a page. Redrawing it at a lower resolution is where the big savings come from.
Photo-heavy reports
Brochures and reports full of photographs usually shrink well with the aggressive method at medium resolution.
Text-only documents
A PDF saved from a word processor is mostly text and already small. Turning it into images can make it bigger — the tool tells you when that happens.
What it cannot do
Miracle compression
The safe method only cleans up the structure and the metadata; on an already compressed file the saving can be close to zero. Big savings mean turning pages into images, and the price of that is text you can no longer select.
Encrypted PDFs
Password-protected documents will not open; you have to remove the password first.
Common questions
Which compression method should I choose?
If the document is going to be read, searched or archived, safe. If you only need to get under an upload limit, aggressive — but afterwards the text cannot be selected or searched, and screen readers cannot read the content.
Why did my file get bigger?
The aggressive method replaced text and vector drawing with pixels, and pixels take more room. Use the safe method for that document.
Is my document uploaded to a server?
No. The PDF is opened in your browser's memory and processed there; no request goes over the network. With contracts and invoices that is exactly what matters.