How to reduce PDF file size
Scanned PDFs are often too big to email. Here's how to compress one while keeping it readable — with no watermarks and no upload.
Light vs strong compression
- Light — re-saves the PDF with object streams and keeps text selectable. Best for text documents.
- Strong — rasterizes pages to JPEG at your chosen quality. Much smaller for scans and image-heavy PDFs, but pages become images.
Steps
- Open the compress PDF tool and drop your file.
- Choose Light or Strong depending on what's inside.
- For Strong, pick a quality that balances size against readability.
- Download the smaller PDF.
When Strong is worth it
If your PDF is mostly scanned images, Strong mode delivers the biggest reduction because the images — not the text — dominate the file size. For a born-digital document with real text, Light keeps everything selectable.
Tools used in this guide
Related guides
How to reduce PDF file size — FAQ
Run it through the compress tool. For scans, Strong mode shrinks it the most; for text documents, Light keeps text selectable.