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PDF compression in 2026: what actually shrinks a file
Not all PDFs compress the same way. Text-heavy PDFs are already tiny. Scanned PDFs balloon in size. Here's how compression really works.
28 May 2026 · 6 min read · ToolBharat Team
PDFs are containers. What they contain determines whether compression saves 5% or 95%.
Three kinds of PDF content
- **Text and vector graphics** — already extremely compact. Compression rarely helps.
- **Embedded images** — biggest lever. Recompressing at lower quality can drop file size by 80%.
- **Fonts** — subsetting removes glyphs you don't use.
Recommended workflow
- Try lossless first (structural cleanup, font subsetting).
- If still too large, target image DPI — 150 DPI is fine for screens, 300 for print.
A note on scans
Scanned PDFs are essentially image bundles. OCR + re-imaging often shrinks them further than a raw compress.