A scanned contract that's 18 MB. A photo of an ID card saved as PDF at 8 MB. These compress beautifully — but you have to compress them right.
Photo-based PDFs aren't documents with photos. The whole page is one big photo. Compression rules are different.
Know the difference between photo PDFs and document PDFs
Document PDFs have selectable text. Photo PDFs are pictures saved as PDFs — every "page" is one image. Try to select text on a scanned PDF; if nothing highlights, it's a photo PDF.
Photo PDFs compress better than document PDFs of the same size because there's just one image type to optimise.
Compress on medium first
Open the file in Flint's compressor at Medium. A 10-20 MB photo PDF typically lands at 2-5 MB with no visible quality loss.
For ID scans, this is plenty. The face and details stay crisp; only invisible noise is removed.
Add OCR if the file is a scan
Photo PDFs aren't searchable. Run OCR on the compressed file to add a text layer. Now you can search, copy, and screen readers work.
OCR adds a tiny amount of file size — usually a few KB. Worth it.
FAQ
Will my scan still be readable after compression?
At Medium, yes — easily. At High, watch for softness on small text. Always check at full screen.
Can I compress an ID photo PDF safely?
Yes. ID and passport scans compress well. Test the result against official requirements — most accept 200-500 KB compressed PDFs.
Should I OCR before or after compressing?
Compress first, OCR second. Compressing after OCR can corrupt the text layer in some tools.
What's the limit for compressing a scan?
If the result is unreadable, you've gone too far. Use the lowest level that satisfies your size constraint.
Photo PDFs are compression-friendly. Compress yours at Medium, add OCR, and you've got a small searchable file.