About the PDF Compressor
Large PDF files — often bloated by high-resolution embedded images or scanned pages — can be slow to email, upload, or share. This PDF Compressor reduces file size by re-rendering each page and re-encoding it at an adjustable quality level, entirely inside your browser, without ever uploading your document to a server.
This tool is useful for anyone needing to email a PDF that exceeds an attachment size limit, students and professionals submitting documents to portals with upload size restrictions, and businesses archiving large volumes of scanned paperwork more efficiently.
To use it, upload your PDF and choose a compression level (light, medium, or strong). The tool renders each page and re-encodes it as a compressed image within a new PDF, trading a small amount of visual fidelity for a significantly smaller file. A before/after file size comparison is shown before you download the result, so you can judge whether the quality tradeoff is acceptable for your use case.
For example, a 20-page scanned document saved as a 15MB PDF from a flatbed scanner at very high DPI might compress down to 2-4MB at medium compression — small enough to attach to virtually any email service — while still remaining perfectly legible for a document containing text and simple graphics.
A point to understand is that this method works by rasterizing pages into images, which is the most reliable way to shrink file size directly in a browser without a server; the tradeoff is that any text becomes part of a flattened image rather than remaining as selectable, searchable text in the compressed output. If your primary need is to preserve selectable, searchable text at a smaller file size, and your PDF's size mainly comes from something other than page images, this rasterization-based compression may not be the ideal approach — always check the compressed result meets your specific requirements before replacing your original file.
Tip: try medium compression first for scanned documents and photos, since it typically balances file size and readability well; reserve strong compression for cases where hitting a specific size limit matters more than maximum visual fidelity, and always keep your original uncompressed file as a backup.