Two hundred kilobytes in practice
Many online portals set 200 KB for documents such as a CV, a certificate or an ID scan. That leaves room for text and a couple of reasonable pictures. A colour scan of an A4 page at 150 dpi is a few hundred kilobytes (234 KB in our test), so a single scanned page usually needs a little more reduction to fit: the PDF holding it reached 169 KB with the picture at about 147 dpi.
Documents made of text with a logo and a photo usually fit at Balanced already, and then the tool returns that result without shrinking the pictures any further. Slide decks and reports with oversized pictures are the other easy case. Our 38 MB deck fitted at 80 KB with its pictures still at 150 dpi, because the pictures were thousands of pixels wide and were shown at no more than a few inches across.
What the pictures look like at 200 KB
- Photos: six full page photos came to 191 KB, about 32 KB per page, at about 69 dpi. You can see what each photo shows, and it is soft when you zoom in.
- A scan of text: about 147 dpi. Body text stays sharp, and stamps and signatures keep their shape.
- Screenshots and a photo: our four page PDF fitted at Balanced (150 dpi, 118 KB), because the same two pictures were used on every page. With more different screenshots the resolution drops, and small text inside them is the first thing to lose clarity, so check it.
The tool lowers resolution and quality together and aims for a file just under the limit, so you do not pay more softness than the limit asks for.
Improving the odds
- Scan only what is needed. One page more is often the difference between fitting and not.
- Choose black and white for text. A black and white scan is very compact. This tool leaves such scans as they are, so make them that way when you scan.
- Crop the margins. Less paper means a smaller picture.
- Split the file. If the portal accepts several documents, Split PDF can divide it so each part fits.