ENPTES

Compress and convert

How to compress a PDF without uploading it

A portal that rejects a large attachment does not care why the PDF is heavy. Compress PDF tries to make it smaller on your device. The useful part is knowing which mode matches the file you have, because the two modes do different things.

Open the tool: Compress PDF

Do it on GustKit

  1. Open the PDF

    Drop one PDF on Compress PDF. If the pages are still separate images, make the PDF first and compress that download.

  2. Pick a level

    Leave Balanced when the file has photos and you still need to select the text. Choose Strong only for a scan, or when the smallest file matters more than selectable text.

  3. Compare the sizes

    Press Compress. The page shows the size before and after. If nothing got smaller, GustKit says so and keeps the original.

  4. Download the one you will send

    Open the result and check a page of text and a page with a photo. Send that file. Keep the original until you are sure.

Balanced mode, in plain terms

Balanced looks for the photos inside the PDF, scales them to about 150 dpi, and saves them again as JPEG. Text, vector drawings, and fonts are not rewritten. A sentence stays selectable. A logo drawn as vectors stays sharp. This is the right default for a report, a slide export, or a form that happens to contain a picture.

It will not invent savings that are not there. A PDF that is already mostly text, such as an export from a word processor, often has little to remove. The page tells you when the original is the smaller file. That is a result, not a failure.

Strong mode is a different tool in the same box

Strong re-renders every page as an image at screen resolution. Scanned packets shrink a lot, because each page was already a picture and a noisy one. The cost is real: the text is no longer selectable, and search inside the PDF will not find a word. Use it for a phone scan you only need to read, not for a contract you may need to copy from.

Do not run Strong and then expect PDF to text to pull clean sentences out. If you still need the words as text, stay on Balanced, or OCR a scan on its own page before you worry about size.

Where the weight usually comes from

Photos and scans dominate. A three-page phone scan can be tens of megabytes. A ten-page letter with no images can be a few hundred kilobytes and will not move. JPG to PDF embeds JPG files as they are, so a PDF made from camera photos is large on purpose. Compress that PDF afterwards if the destination has a cap.

Merging does the opposite of compressing. Merge PDF copies pages and the size adds up. Compress after the merge, not before, so you shrink the file you will actually send. Flattening a form is a separate choice on Flatten PDF: it burns field values into the page. Do that only when the form should no longer be editable.

Private by the same rule as the other tools

The PDF is processed in this tab. It is not uploaded. A confidential packet is a good reason to use this page instead of a site that asks you to drop the file on their server.

If Balanced is not enough and Strong would ruin the text, the honest next step is outside the browser: a desktop tool that subsets fonts can sometimes go further. GustKit does not pretend otherwise.

Frequently asked questions

Why did my PDF stay the same size?

The file probably has no large images. Text and fonts are already compact. Balanced will not damage them just to show a smaller number, and the page keeps the original when it cannot help.

Will printing still look acceptable?

Balanced keeps photos near 150 dpi, which is enough for a normal office print and for reading on a screen. Strong is aimed at screen-sized scans. Check one page before you print a stack.

Should I compress before or after I merge?

After. Merge the pages you need, then compress that single file. Compressing each piece first is extra work and can look different on every page.

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