PDF Size

Compress PDF

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Local · images re-encoded, structure rewritten
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Most of the size of a large PDF is images. This tool decodes each embedded JPEG, scales it down if it is bigger than the target, re-encodes it at the quality you choose, then rewrites the file with object streams and no metadata. Scanned documents typically shrink by half or more; a text-only PDF saves a few per cent.

How to compress a PDF

1 Drop the PDF in. Compression starts straight away.
2 Move the quality and size sliders if the result is still too big, or if it looks too soft.
3 Download the smaller version. If nothing could be saved, the tool says so rather than handing you a worse file.

Be clear about what this does and does not do. It re-encodes JPEG images and tidies the file structure. It does not re-run text through OCR, subset fonts, flatten forms or convert vector artwork to bitmaps, all of which desktop tools do and all of which can lose information. That means a text-heavy report will barely shrink — and the honest answer there is that it is already small.

Questions

Because it is mostly text and vectors, which are already compressed efficiently. There is no image data to re-encode, so only the structural saving of a few per cent is available.

Adobe — PDF reference, ISO 32000
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