# Compress PDF

> Make a PDF smaller by drawing its pages again as images, or remove the author data from its properties, without uploading it.

Canonical: https://host-tools.com/tools/compress-pdf/

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## What does this tool do?

Two different jobs, kept apart on purpose:

- **Make it smaller.** Each page is drawn again as a JPEG image and the PDF is rebuilt with those
  images. On scans this can cut the file to a fraction. The result shows the before and after size,
  so you can decide whether it was worth it.
- **Remove the author data.** Clears the title, author, subject and keywords from the file’s
  properties. **The size barely changes** — calling that “compression” would be a lie.

## The price of making it smaller

A rebuilt page is a photograph: the text stops being text. You can no longer select it, search it or
copy it, and fine print gets softer. That is not a bug of this tool, it is what “smaller” means when
everything has to happen inside your browser and no server is allowed to re-encode the document
smarter.

So: use the first option for scans and photographs, where there was never any text to lose. If your
PDF is mostly text and it is already small, this will make it bigger or no smaller, and the tool will
tell you so instead of pretending.

## Keep in mind

Nothing is uploaded, and the original file is not modified: what you get is a new file with
`-compressed` or `-clean` on the name.