Guide

How to make a scanned PDF smaller without uploading it

When compression helps

Scans and photo-heavy PDFs are large because each page is a big image. Rebuilding them as lower-resolution JPEG pages can cut the size by a large amount. A PDF that is mostly text is already small and gains little.

What you lose

This method turns each page into an image, so the text can no longer be selected, searched or copied. If you need searchable text, keep the original or run OCR afterwards. Do not use it for forms you still need to fill.

Choose quality and resolution

Smaller quality and resolution give smaller files but softer text. Start with Balanced, zoom in on a page of small print, and step up to Sharper if it is hard to read.

If the result is bigger

A file that is already efficient can grow when rebuilt. The tool says so and does not download a worse file, so you keep the original.

Do it in your browser

The Xargaar PDF Toolkit merges, splits, reorders, rotates and compresses PDFs, turns images into a PDF and adds page numbers. Files stay on your device. The free version produces up to 100 pages per output file.

Open the free PDF Toolkit

No page limit and offline use: the one-time $19 offline pack is here: https://xargaartools.gumroad.com/l/pdf-toolkit-offline-pack