Compress PDF With Images

A PDF embeds the full source image regardless of the display size on the page. A 12-megapixel phone photo placed in a small frame still stores every one of those pixels — roughly 4 MB per picture. Twenty photos therefore produce an 80 MB document even though the visible page could be reproduced faithfully with a fraction of that data.

Not at normal viewing sizes. We downsample to the resolution the page layout actually requires, so images remain crisp on screen and in ordinary printing. Pixelation only becomes visible if you zoom far past 100% or choose Extreme mode on a photo-critical document.

That is precisely how the engine works. Text in a PDF is stored as vector glyph instructions and is left completely untouched by every preset — it stays infinitely scalable and perfectly sharp. Only raster images are re-encoded.

Yes, in two ways. Pick one of four calibrated presets for a quality-led decision, or switch to Target Size mode and enter an exact figure in KB or MB. Target mode steps through progressively stronger settings and stops at the highest quality that still fits your limit.

Any modern browser with WebAssembly support: Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi, on desktop and mobile alike. There is no minimum specification beyond that — older or lower-powered devices simply take longer on large documents.

Both, layered. Structural optimization — removing duplicate objects, dead revisions and metadata — is entirely lossless. Image downsampling and JPEG re-encoding are lossy, which is where the substantial savings come from. Text and vector graphics are never touched by either stage.

Text always stays sharp because it remains real vector text rather than an image. Embedded photographs are downsampled and re-encoded, so quality loss scales with how aggressive a preset you choose. Less Compression is visually near-identical to the original.

Yes. The interface is fully responsive and the engine runs on iOS and Android. Bear in mind that mobile devices have less memory, so very large files (over roughly 50 MB) may be slow or fail on older phones.

Less Compression favours quality with images near 200 DPI. Recommended is the balanced default at roughly 144 DPI. Extreme maximises size reduction at about 96 DPI. Target Size ignores presets entirely and searches for the best quality that fits your specified limit.

Progress tracks pages completed, not time elapsed, and pages differ enormously in cost. A page holding one large photograph takes far longer than ten pages of plain text, so the bar appears to stall. It is still working — the Web Worker keeps the interface responsive throughout.