How to make a PDF smaller without losing quality
Some PDF weight is pure waste: duplicated fonts and images, editing history, and pages saved without compression. Removing that weight loses nothing. Our Compress PDF always starts there, with a clean lossless save - and for many files that alone is enough to get under a portal cap.
Honesty matters after that point. If the lossless file is still too big for your target, the only remaining lever is rendering pages at lower resolution, which is a real trade-off, not a free trick. The tool does it in small steps and keeps the clearest version that fits, so the loss is the minimum your target forces - and it tells you plainly which route your file took. Removing unneeded pages first is the other genuinely free win.
How to do it
- Remove pages you do not need with Delete and Organize Pages.
- Run Compress PDF with your target size - the lossless save happens first automatically.
- Read the result panel: it tells you if your file stayed lossless or needed the stepped shrink.
- If it stepped down further than you like, raise the target if your portal allows, or split the document.
Common questions
Is lossless compression always possible?
A lossless save can only remove waste. If a file is mostly high-resolution photos, there may be little waste to remove, and small targets will need the stepped shrink.
What quality loss is acceptable for portals?
Portal reviewers read on screen. The stepped shrink keeps the clearest fitting version, which stays comfortably readable at typical caps.
Are my files uploaded?
No. All of this happens in your browser.
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