Why 500KB is a great target
Most email providers comfortably attach files under 1MB, and a 500KB PDF is small enough to load instantly on slow connections while still preserving image quality. It's the de-facto standard for HR forms, vendor onboarding, and most online applications.
How it works
Digitol Tools first runs a lossless pass — re-streaming the PDF with optimized object streams and removing unused objects. If the file is still above 500KB, it rasterizes each page to JPEG at adaptive quality, binary-searching the right setting to hit your target within ±5%.
Tips for tougher documents
Scanned multi-page reports often start at 20MB+. Even those can be compressed to 500KB in most cases — the trade-off is some softening of colour photos. For text-only documents, expect crisp results at this size.
Related
Need a tighter target? 100KB. Need more headroom? 1MB. For arbitrary targets use the main compressor.