Compress a PDF without ruining the print
Pick the preset for the job: lossless, print, email, or screen.
Most “compress PDF” buttons hide a single aggressive setting. The file gets small, and the photos turn to mush. FileNest asks you to choose.
Lossless rewrites the PDF structure with qpdf. Use it when the file is already mostly text and you want a tidy copy, not a resampled one. The savings are often modest.
High is for a document someone may still print. Balanced is the email setting. Small is for reading on a screen, where a scan’s images can shrink a lot.
The work runs on the server because Ghostscript is the honest tool for image resampling, and a browser cannot match it reliably. The input and the result are temporary. Download the file, then let the hour run out.
If the compressed file is still over a portal’s limit, export the heavy pages with PDF to JPG and decide whether those pages need to be in the PDF at all. Shrinking is not the same as editing.