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Compress a PDF

Shrink a PDF by recompressing the photos inside it. Text stays sharp; results vary with the file.

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Files stay on your device. How this works

How to compress a PDF

  1. Select Choose file and pick the PDF you want to make smaller.
  2. Under Compression, choose Light, Balanced (recommended) or Strong. Strong gives the biggest saving, but photos may look softer.
  3. Select Compress PDF. When it's done, compare the Original, New and Change sizes and look at the first-page preview.
  4. Download the smaller file, or try another setting if you need more saving.

Good to know

  • Results vary a lot from file to file. Color or grayscale scans and PDFs full of photos usually shrink the most. PDFs that are mostly text may barely change, or not change at all.
  • One PDF at a time, up to 25 MB and 300 pages.
  • Only plain JPEG photos inside the PDF are recompressed and, if they're larger than the setting allows, scaled down. A photo is replaced only when that makes it clearly smaller.
  • Text, fonts, drawings and links aren't touched, and pages are never turned into images, so text stays sharp and selectable.
  • Transparent images, CMYK print images, small images and other image types are left exactly as they are.
  • The smaller file is named with -compressed, for example photos-compressed.pdf. If the result wouldn't be at least 3% smaller, you get your original file back unchanged, and we tell you so.
  • Digitally signed PDFs aren't changed, because compressing them would break the signature. Password-protected PDFs can't be opened.

Frequently asked questions

How much smaller will my PDF get?
It depends entirely on what's inside. A scan or a photo-heavy report can shrink a lot; a text document may shrink very little. You see the exact before and after sizes before you download.
Why did my PDF barely get smaller?
Its size probably comes from text, fonts or vector graphics, which are already stored efficiently. Filecon only recompresses photos, so it can't shrink those parts without lowering quality.
Which setting should I use?
Start with Balanced. Use Strong when you need to get under an email or upload limit, and check the preview to make sure photos still look good. Choose Light when image quality matters most.
How do I get a PDF small enough to email?
Try Strong first. If it's still too big, cut the document into parts with Split PDF and send them separately, or share a link from a cloud storage service instead.
Will the text still be selectable and searchable?
Yes. Text and fonts are left as they are, so anything you could select or search before still works after compressing.

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