When a PDF under 200 KB helps
- Scanned certificates and mark sheets for application portals
- Two or three scanned pages in one file
- Flyers and price lists sent through contact forms
Crop the scan to the paper before you turn it into a PDF. The desk or table around the page takes pixels, and every pixel of the page image shares the same 200 KB.
If the form also sets a minimum, compare it with the result. The tool never makes a file larger, and a PDF that is already under 200 KB is left as it is.
Budget per page at 200 KB
The whole file has to fit into 200,000 bytes (1,600,000 bits), pages, images, fonts and structure together. In a scan, the page images take nearly all of that. A single Letter page at 150 dpi, the Medium level, is 2,103,750 pixels, which leaves 0.76 bits per pixel at 200 KB.
| Pages | Per page | Good0.5 bits per pixel | Moderate0.25 bits per pixel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 200 KB | 150 dpi | 200 dpi |
| 5 | 40 KB | 72 dpi | 100 dpi |
| 10 | 20 KB | 50 dpi | 72 dpi |
| 20 | 10 KB | below 50 dpi | 50 dpi |
The last two columns show the highest resolution on the tool's list at which a full scanned Letter page still gets that many bits per pixel. Quality bands from section 4.5 of Gregory Wallace's paper on the JPEG standard, which rates color images of moderate detail; he notes that results vary with the content, so read them as a cautious guide for scans. A4 is about 3% larger than Letter.
The steps the tool tries for 200 KB
The tool does not guess from a table: it compresses the real file and measures it. These are its ten steps, from mild to strong, with the pixel size of a full Letter page at each resolution and the number of such page scans that 200 KB holds at 0.5 bits per pixel.
| Step | Resolution | JPEG quality | Letter page | Full pages at 200 KB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 300 dpi | 85 | 2,550 × 3,300 | not one full page |
| 2 | 200 dpi | 80 | 1,700 × 2,200 | not one full page |
| 3 | 150 dpi | 72 | 1,275 × 1,650 | 1 page |
| 4 | 150 dpi | 60 | 1,275 × 1,650 | 1 page |
| 5 | 120 dpi | 55 | 1,020 × 1,320 | 2 pages |
| 6 | 100 dpi | 50 | 850 × 1,100 | 3 pages |
| 7 | 85 dpi | 45 | 723 × 935 | 4 pages |
| 8 | 72 dpi | 40 | 612 × 792 | 6 pages |
| 9 | 60 dpi | 35 | 510 × 660 | 9 pages |
| 10 | 50 dpi | 30 | 425 × 550 | 13 pages |
Which PDFs fit in 200 KB
A one-page scan keeps 0.5 bits per pixel, which Wallace's guide rates good to very good, up to 150 dpi. Ten scanned pages still get there at 50 dpi. A PDF of text, like a letter or an invoice exported from a word processor, has no page images, so it fits or not depending on its fonts and text, and this tool copies those unchanged.
Some images stay as they are, because recompressing them would change them or gain nothing: images under 12 KB (12,288 bytes), black-and-white scans stored with fax-style compression (CCITT or JBIG2), JPEG 2000 images, images with a stencil or color-key mask, CMYK images, and flat graphics like logos and charts unless they shrink a lot in pixels. A recompressed image also has to be at least 10% smaller than the original, or the original is kept.
When 200 KB is out of reach
- If the PDF is already at or under 200 KB, the tool says so and you can send the original as it is.
- If it has no images the tool can recompress, it tells you right away that 200 KB is out of reach.
- If even the strongest step, 50 dpi at JPEG quality 30, stays above 200 KB, you see the smallest size it reached. When text, fonts and other parts alone take more than 200 KB, the message says how much. If that smallest version is at least 3% smaller than the original, you can still download it.
Then send fewer pages or split the document: cut out pages with Split PDF or drop the ones you do not need with Delete PDF Pages, and compress each part.
200 KB in bytes
Here 200 KB means 200,000 bytes. A system that counts in 1,024-byte units shows the same limit as 195.31 KB (0.191 MB); a file at or under 200,000 bytes is under both.
Getting a PDF under 200 KB
Drop a PDF above. The target is already set to 200 KB. Press Compress PDF and the tool first runs its strongest step to check that 200 KB can be reached. If it can, it searches its steps for the mildest one that fits, from 300 dpi at quality 85 down, which takes three or four more runs. Text, fonts, links and form fields are copied unchanged. When the result uses 72 dpi or less, the tool asks you to zoom in and check that scanned text is still easy to read.
Need a different limit? One size down is 100 KB, one size up 300 KB. Type any size into the target field, or use the PDF compressor with Low, Medium or High compression. To combine files first, use Merge PDF; to turn photos of a document into a PDF, JPG to PDF. For a photo or a scan saved as an image, compress the image to 200 KB instead.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
How many scanned pages fit in 200 KB?
At 0.5 bits per pixel, which Wallace's guide rates good to very good for color images, 200 KB holds 1 page scanned at 150 dpi, 3 pages at 100 dpi and 6 pages at 72 dpi (US Letter; A4 is about 3% larger). Fonts and the file structure take part of the budget too. These are estimates: the tool measures the real file at each step and keeps the mildest one that fits.
Is 200 KB counted as 200,000 or 204,800 bytes?
The tool counts 200,000 bytes and stays at or under that. A form that counts 1 KB as 1,024 bytes allows up to 204,800 bytes, so the file passes either way. Your computer may show it as about 195 KB, because it divides by 1,024.
Does compressing to 200 KB remove text or pages?
No. Every page stays, and text, fonts, links, bookmarks and form fields are copied as they are. Only photos and scanned pages are scaled down and saved again as JPEG.
Is my PDF uploaded to compress it to 200 KB?
No. Your browser opens the PDF, recompresses the images in it and writes the new file on your own device. Nothing is sent to a server.