"Your attachment exceeds the 10MB limit." If you've ever been blocked by that email, this is for you.
Why PDFs get huge
Three culprits, in order of impact:
- **Embedded images** — scanned pages, screenshots, photo-heavy decks.
- **Duplicate fonts** — same font embedded multiple times.
- **Unoptimized metadata** — edit history, thumbnails, color profiles.
The two compression modes
**Lossless** — strips redundant structure without touching images. Typically saves 20–40%. Zero visual change.
**Lossy** — downsamples images and drops invisible metadata. Saves 60–90%. Visual difference is imperceptible at typical zoom levels.
What to choose
- **Legal documents, contracts** → lossless
- **Presentations, reports** → lossy (60%)
- **Scanned receipts, ID proofs** → lossy (40% quality, aggressive)
- **Anything going to print** → lossless only
The 1MB email trick
Most Indian email providers cap at 10–25MB. To hit 1MB on a typical 15-page text PDF:
- Run lossy compression at 70% quality
- If still too big, rasterize to 150 DPI (we do this automatically)
- For image-only PDFs, downsample to 96 DPI
Privacy
Compression runs in your browser. Files never upload.