DocVerify Pro › Compress a PDF to 2 MB
How to compress a PDF to 2 MB without wrecking the text
There are exactly two levers: how many pixels the page has, and how hard those pixels are compressed. They fail in different ways. Pull the wrong one and the file hits the limit but the decimal points disappear.
The short answer. Reduce the resolution first, and only then the quality. Dropping a page from 300 DPI to 200 DPI removes about 55% of the pixels and usually leaves the text perfectly readable. Dropping JPEG quality far enough to do the same job attacks the thin strokes — commas, decimal points, accents — which are the characters that matter.
Why resolution is the safer lever
Halving the DPI quarters the pixel count, because it applies to both dimensions. From 300 DPI to 150 DPI a Letter page goes from about 8.4 megapixels to 2.1 — a 75% cut before any compression is even considered. Text remains readable at 200 DPI on almost any typed document; what suffers first is a fine security pattern or a signature in light ink.
| DPI | Pixels on a Letter page | Share of the 300 DPI size |
|---|---|---|
| 300 | 2550 × 3300 = 8.4 MP | 100% |
| 250 | 2125 × 2750 = 5.8 MP | ≈ 69% |
| 200 | 1700 × 2200 = 3.7 MP | ≈ 45% |
| 150 | 1275 × 1650 = 2.1 MP | ≈ 25% |
Why quality is the dangerous one
JPEG compression works in 8 × 8 blocks and throws away the finest detail first. On a photograph that is invisible. On a page of text it is the opposite: the finest detail is the content. Push the quality low enough and a comma becomes a smudge, a decimal point disappears, and a 3 starts to look like an 8. The page still looks clean at a glance, which is what makes it dangerous.
The third lever, when the page is text only
A page with no photograph, no coloured seal and no signature to compare can go bitonal — one bit per pixel instead of twenty-four. A 6 MB colour scan of a typed page commonly lands between 40 and 90 KB. Do not do this to anything with a photograph, a coloured stamp, a wet-ink signature or security printing: those need the greys and the colour to stay meaningful.
What not to do
- Do not go below the DPI the destination asks for. Hitting 2 MB at 100 DPI on a filing that requires 300 DPI trades one rejection for another.
- Do not compress twice. Each JPEG re-save compounds the damage, and the second pass has less to work with than the first.
- Do not crop off the margins to save space. The saving is negligible and a reviewer may read a missing border as a missing part of the document.
Hitting an exact number
"Under 2 MB" is a ceiling, not a target. The right result is as close under it as the document allows, because every megabyte you give away is detail the reviewer does not get. Aim to land just below the limit rather than far under it.
Hit an exact file size and keep the text readable
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