Room to keep things sharp
Two megabytes is enough for pictures at a comfortable resolution. Our six page photo PDF came to 2.02 MB at Balanced, just over the limit, so the tool lowered its pictures from 150 to about 147 dpi and the file came to 1.7 MB, 64 percent smaller than the 4.8 MB original. Because 2 MB is more than most documents need after recompression, the tool usually stays at your chosen level and only changes pictures that are larger than they need to be. That keeps scans of text readable even when zoomed in, and photographs looking natural.
If your PDF is much larger than 2 MB, the tool works down from your level until the file fits. Documents of tens of megabytes made of oversized pictures often reach 2 MB with no visible change at all: our 38 MB deck came to 80 KB.
Trying High quality first
With a 2 MB limit there is often room for the High quality level, which keeps pictures at up to 220 dpi and a higher JPEG quality, for documents that will be printed. Choose it, and the tool starts there. If the result is over 2 MB, it lowers the resolution only as far as it takes to fit, and the note tells you the resolution it ended on.
How many pages fit in 2 MB
It depends on what the pages hold. In our tests a full page photo cost about 336 KB at Balanced (2.0 MB for six pages), and a colour A4 scan about 234 KB. That puts 2 MB at roughly six photo pages or eight scanned pages at 150 dpi, and at more pages than that when the tool lowers the resolution to make them fit. Pages of text with small logos cost a few kilobytes each, so hundreds of them fit.
A quick way to plan: compress one page first, look at its size, and multiply. If the total is over the limit, the tool will bring the resolution down for you, and the note on the result says how far.
Where a 2 MB limit appears
- Services that collect documents for signature, where each upload is limited.
- Mail systems that set a modest limit on an attachment. Remember that email adds about a third to its size.
- Applications and forms with several documents that add up to a total limit.
If the limit is for the total of several files, compress each to a smaller size, for example 1 MB each for two files.