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Byte budget
Compress a PDF to a specific size
Most PDF compressors give you a vague quality setting and let you find out afterwards. This one takes the number the form is demanding and works down until the file is under it.
Common limits
Result
How it gets there
First it tries a lossless repack, which rewrites the document keeping only what is still referenced and packing the objects efficiently. On a file that has been edited many times this alone can be enough, and it costs nothing at all in quality. If the repack already fits your target the tool stops there and tells you so.
If that is not enough it rebuilds the pages as images, stepping down through a ladder of resolution and quality settings and measuring the real file size at each step. It stops at the first setting that fits, so you get the best-looking result that satisfies the limit rather than the smallest possible file.
What you give up
The rebuild is destructive in one important way: the text stops being text. It becomes a picture of text, so it can no longer be selected, searched or read by a screen reader. For a scanned document that was already true and you lose nothing. For a document exported from a word processor it is a real loss, and worth avoiding if the recipient might need to copy from it.
If a large target is unreachable, the honest answer is usually that the document has more content than the limit allows. Splitting it and sending two files is often better than crushing one into illegibility.
Common questions
How do I compress a PDF to 100 KB?
Press the 100 KB button and compress. Whether it is achievable depends on the document: a two page letter will manage it easily, a forty page colour scan will not without becoming unreadable, and the tool will tell you how close it got.
Why is my text blurry afterwards?
Because the pages were rebuilt as images to reach your target. Raise the target if you can, or use the lossless repack in compress PDF, which never touches quality.
It says it cannot reach my target. What now?
Split the document, remove pages you do not need with delete pages, or accept a larger file. There is a floor below which a given number of pages cannot go.
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