Compress PDF

Compress PDF makes a PDF smaller in one of three ways, and tells you the size before and after. "Smaller photos" finds the photos stored inside the PDF, re-saves them with fewer pixels and a lower quality, and leaves everything else — text, fonts, drawings, links — exactly as it was, so the text can still be selected and searched. "Pages as pictures" draws every page as one picture at the resolution you choose; it shrinks scanned documents the most, but the text is no longer text. "To a size you choose" is for upload forms with a limit, such as 200 KB or 1 MB: it tries stronger settings one after another and keeps the mildest that fits. Every way, the new file is opened again and checked page by page before it is offered.

1. Choose a PDF, or drop it on the page. Several PDFs are compressed together as one.
2. In Compress, choose Smaller photos and a strength, Pages as pictures and a quality, or To a size you choose and type the limit.
3. Press Compress and download. The file is made and checked; you see the size before and after.
4. If the result is not smaller, the page says so. Keep your original.

• A PDF of text and drawings is already compact: there is little to shrink, and the result says so instead of pretending.
• Smaller photos works on photos stored as JPEG, the way most scanners and cameras store them. Images stored another way (PNG-like screenshots and diagrams, CMYK print images) are left as they were, and so are photos that would not come out clearly smaller.
• Pages as pictures makes text unselectable and unsearchable, and links stop working. Use it for scans, not for documents people need to copy from.
• A size limit is met by trying settings, each a full build, so it takes a few times as long. 1 KB is taken as 1,000 bytes, the stricter meaning. Pages become pictures only if you tick that; if no setting fits, you are told the smallest reached and may still take it.
• Files up to 300 MB each. A password-protected PDF asks for its password when added. Bookmarks and attachments are not carried over.
• Your files are read and written in this browser tab. They are not uploaded to ToolsDev or anyone else, and nothing is saved: closing the tab ends the session, so download what you want to keep (the page asks before you leave with work not downloaded). The page downloads its own code, and pdf.js's fonts and image decoders when a page needs them, from toolsdev.in — none of those requests carries your files.

For a scan, or a document made of photos, start with Smaller photos at Balanced. If it must be smaller still and nobody needs to copy its text, try Pages as pictures. For a typed document, neither will save much.

Photos lose some detail: hardly visible at A little smaller, clearly at Smallest. Text and drawings are not touched by Smaller photos, so they stay perfectly sharp.

Because the space in it is used by text, fonts or drawings, which are already compressed, or by images that are not stored as JPEG photos. Pages as pictures may still help for scans.

Often, when the size comes from photos or scans: choose To a size you choose and type the limit. A many-page scan may only get there as pictures, so tick that if you can do without selectable text. If even the strongest setting is too large, the page says how small it got rather than claiming success.

No. The photos are re-saved by your own browser, in the background, and the file never leaves this tab.