Guides

Short, honest answers about making a PDF smaller in the browser: upload limits, scanned PDFs, iPhone and Mac, image quality, and why a PDF is large.

• Get a PDF under an upload limit

  A form says your PDF is too large. How to get it under an upload limit like 1 MB, 500 KB or 200 KB, what usually makes it big, and what to do if it still doesn't fit.

• Compress a scanned PDF

  Scanned PDFs are large because every page is a photo. How compressing a scan works, which level to choose so small print stays legible, and what to expect from the file size.

• Compress a PDF on iPhone or Mac

  Make a PDF smaller on an iPhone, iPad or Mac in the browser, without installing an app or sending the file to a server. Where the result goes and what to do with large files.

• Compress a PDF without losing quality?

  An honest answer: what stays exactly the same when a PDF is compressed, what changes in the images, how to keep the change invisible, and when there's nothing left to gain.

• Why is my PDF so large?

  A few pages but many megabytes: the usual reasons a PDF is large, from high-resolution scans and photos to attachments and embedded fonts, and which of them compressing can fix.