Size

Twelve pages and twenty-six megabytes

A scanner set to 300 dpi in colour produces roughly two megabytes per A4 page. Twelve pages later the attachment will not send.

Shrink your fileYou see the result before downloading

The arithmetic matters because it tells you where to intervene. A text document of the same length weighs a fraction of that: the weight is in the images, not in the pages.

Before you compress, check the scanner

Greyscale instead of colour, and 200 dpi instead of 300, cut the size several times over for ordinary paperwork — and nothing legible is lost. Re-scanning is often faster than compressing.

What compression does

Images inside are stored more economically. Text stays sharp; photographs and scans go through compression, and that is where the difference comes from.

What does not come back

Detail removed from an image does not return. For documents going to an office that checks stamps and seals, keep the original beside the smaller copy.

Where this one runs

This is a server tool. The file is sent, processed and returned, and the result is held for sixty minutes.