Compress PDF
Shrink scanned and photo-heavy PDFs by turning their pages into lean images.
How to use the Compress PDF
- Put the PDF you want to shrink into the left panel, by dragging it there or browsing for it.
- Pick a compression level. Balanced suits most scans; Strong is for when size matters more than crispness.
- Press "Compress PDF". A counter tracks each page while it is redrawn.
- Read the saving shown beside the result, then download it. If nothing was gained, you get your original back.
About this tool
A browser cannot re-squeeze the insides of a PDF the way desktop software does, so this tool takes a simpler, honest route. It draws every page as a picture at the resolution you pick, stores that picture as a JPEG, and assembles a new PDF from those pictures. Scanned paperwork, documents photographed with a phone and photo-heavy brochures often fall to a fraction of their size this way, which is usually enough to slip under an email or upload-form limit.
The trade-off is real, and you should know it before you start: the pages become images. Words can no longer be selected, searched or read aloud by a screen reader, links stop working and form fields are flattened. For a document that was a scan anyway, nothing is lost. A text document exported from a word processor is probably small already and may even grow, in which case the tool hands back the original untouched and says so.
Tip: begin with Balanced and zoom into the smallest print of the result. If it is still easy to read, try Strong. Keep the original somewhere safe, because the image version cannot be turned back into real text.
Frequently asked questions
Why can I no longer select text after compressing?
Because each page is now a single JPEG picture of the original. That is how the size comes down without a server doing the work. If you need searchable text, keep the original, or only compress documents that started life as scans.
My PDF did not get smaller. What happened?
Files made of text and simple graphics are already compact, often a few dozen kilobytes per page, and a picture of the same page weighs more. When the image version is not smaller, the tool returns the file you gave it and explains that in the note under the result.
Which level should I choose?
Light redraws pages at 150 DPI with gentle JPEG compression and suits documents that will be printed. Balanced uses 120 DPI and is a sound default for reading on screen. Strong drops to 96 DPI with heavier compression, giving the smallest files with slightly soft small print.
Is the PDF sent anywhere to be compressed?
No. The pages are redrawn and re-saved by your own browser, on your own processor, and no copy travels over the network. That is also why a very long file can take a while on an older phone.
Do page size and orientation survive?
Yes. Every page keeps its dimensions, and pages that were rotated in the original appear the right way up. Bookmarks, links, form fields and attachments are not carried over.