Step-by-Step
- Upload your PDF.
- Choose a compression level if the tool offers one — lighter compression preserves more image detail, stronger compression produces a smaller file.
- Compress and review the result — check the new file size and skim a few pages to confirm quality is acceptable.
- Download the compressed file.
What Compression Levels Actually Mean
Most compressors offer something like "high quality," "recommended," and "maximum compression" — these typically correspond to different target image resolutions (DPI). A rough guide:
- High quality (around 300 DPI): suited for printing, preserves the most image detail, smallest size reduction.
- Recommended (around 150 DPI): good for screen viewing and email, a solid balance of size and quality.
- Maximum compression (around 72-96 DPI): smallest file size, appropriate for quick web viewing where fine image detail doesn't matter much.
What to Expect
PDFs dominated by high-resolution images often shrink dramatically — 70-90% size reduction is realistic for that kind of file. Text-heavy documents with few or no images shrink far less, sometimes only 10-30%, simply because there's less redundant image data to remove in the first place.
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