Compress a PDF without turning the letters into mush

People search for “compress PDF” when an email rejects a 12 MB attachment. The usual cheap trick is to screenshot every page as a low-quality JPEG and wrap those pictures in a new PDF. The file gets smaller. The text also becomes a photo: blurry, not searchable, ugly when you zoom.

On Pi2PDF.com, the high setting copies the existing pages and tightens the file structure. Letters that were already real text stay selectable. Medium and low still flatten pages when you need a much smaller file and can live with a picture of the page.

How to choose a level

Use Better quality first. On this site that setting copies the original pages and rewrites the file with object streams, so letters that were real text stay selectable. Open the download and check a paragraph and a logo. If the size barely moved, the PDF may already be lean, or it may be a scan with no extra fat to cut.

Balanced redraws every page as a JPEG at twice the page resolution, JPEG quality 0.92. Smallest uses about 1.45 times resolution and JPEG quality 0.82. Those two downloads are pictures. You cannot select the text afterward. Use them for a photo-heavy file you only need to email, not for a contract you still need to copy from.

What compression cannot fix

A 200-page scanned book is large because the pixels are large. Compression will not invent a text layer. Run OCR if you need words, or accept a heavy file.