PDF Compression Settings Explained: Quality, Size, and Selectable Text
Understand PDF compression quality settings, file-size tradeoffs, and why selectable text can change after compression.
Open Compress PDF — free, in your browser
Choose compression based on the document
The right setting depends on whether the file contains selectable text, photographs, or scanned pages. A high setting preserves detail; a lower setting creates a smaller file by re-encoding page content.
A practical quality guide
- High quality: contracts, forms, signatures, and small text.
- Medium quality: ordinary reports and mixed documents.
- Lower quality: image-heavy scans when upload size matters most.
- Always open the downloaded result and check the pages.
Selectable text and image-based output
Text-native PDFs can keep selectable text at lossless settings. When pages become images at lower settings, text may no longer be copyable. Use the word-count tool as a quick content check.
Check PDF word count · Compress the PDF · How to extract text from a PDF
When this tool is not enough
Use dedicated OCR when you need to recognize text in a scan. Use our free PDF editor for direct text edits, whiteout redaction, or inserting annotations.