Compress a PDF to 500 KB
Half a megabyte is roomy: a ten-page scanned document or a résumé with a photo fits under it with little visible change. It is also the limit where most people first notice their PDF is too big, because a phone scan lands at two or three megabytes by default. This gets it under, and keeps the text as text.
Starting the converter…
How it works
- Drop in the PDF that is over half a megabyte.
- The aim is 500 KB already; the pictures inside are what gets smaller.
- Compress, check the number, and save.
Questions
Why not just aim for the smallest possible file?
Because smaller than the limit buys nothing and costs sharpness. Aiming at 500 KB uses the room you actually have, so a scan keeps as much detail as fits rather than as little as possible.
Will a scanned PDF still search after this?
It will search exactly as well as it did before. A scan that had a hidden text layer keeps it; a scan that never had one still has none, since this tool changes the pictures and nothing else.
PDF → PDF