Pages and files

How to Compress a PDF Without Wrecking the Quality

Updated 2026-09-17 · 2 min read

Almost all PDF bulk is images. Text, even hundreds of pages of it, is tiny. So compression is really a question of how much image detail you can afford to lose.

Here is how to make that trade deliberately.

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Where the size comes from

Photographed or scanned pages are full-resolution photos. A ten-page phone-scanned contract can easily be 25 MB while the same document as real text is under 200 KB.

Sensible settings

For screen reading and most uploads, downsampling images to around 150 dpi is invisible and cuts size dramatically. For documents that will be printed, stay at 300 dpi and accept a larger file.

Other savings

Removing deleted pages, flattening forms and dropping unused embedded fonts all help, and none of them touch legibility.

Frequently asked

Does compressing blur the text?

Real text is never rasterised, so it stays perfectly sharp. Only images are affected.

What size should I aim for?

Under 10 MB clears most email limits; under 5 MB is safer.

Can I compress a file twice?

You can, but repeated image compression accumulates visible artefacts.

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