How the 100 KB budget is split
A 100 KB limit is tight for a PDF made from photos: a single phone photo of a page is often 2 MB or more. Getting under it is always a trade between the number of pages and how sharp each page can be. This guide explains how the tool divides the 100 KB between pages, what to expect for different page counts, and what to do when small print turns blurry.
The limit applies to the whole document, not to each page. The tool first reserves a small allowance for the PDF structure itself, about 1.5 KB plus 0.4 KB per page. The rest is divided evenly between the pages, and each page image is compressed to fit its share.
Pages rarely need exactly the same amount. A nearly blank page leaves part of its share unused, and that leftover is handed to the pages that hit their limit, in up to two extra rounds. If the finished PDF is still over 100 KB, the whole set is compressed again with a slightly smaller budget, up to four attempts in total.
| Pages | Starting budget per page | What to expect (rough guide) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | About 98 KB | A full page with small print usually readable |
| 2 | About 49 KB | Normal print readable on clean scans |
| 3 | About 32 KB | Body text readable; fine print and stamps soften |
| 4 | About 24 KB | Body text readable if the photo is sharp and well lit |
| 6 | About 16 KB | Headings and large text clear; small print marginal |
| 8 | About 12 KB | Mostly headings and large text |
| 10 | About 9.5 KB | Often too soft for body text; split the upload |
The budgets come from how the tool divides the limit. The last column is a rough guide: a crisp, evenly lit page compresses far better than a dim photo with shadows.
A worked example: a six-page scan
Say you photographed six pages of certificates with your phone, about 2 MB each, 12 MB in all. Each page starts with roughly 16 KB. To get there, the encoder first lowers JPEG quality, but not below 45 percent while it can still shrink the image instead, and then reduces the pixel dimensions. For pages this small, expect each image to end up well under 1,000 pixels wide. Headings and names stay clear; footnotes and the small print on stamps may not.
To win sharpness back, you have four honest options:
- Crop each photo to the edges of the paper with Edit on its card. Table, floor and shadows cost bytes just like text does.
- Photograph the pages flat, in even daylight. Shadows and grain take up space that should go to the text.
- Upload two PDFs of three pages each, if the portal has separate fields, so each page gets about twice the budget.
- Check whether the portal really requires 100 KB; some allow more for multi-page documents.
Making the PDF step by step
- Open this page. Limit PDF size is already on with a target of 100 KB.
- Add your images: JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP and the other supported formats all work. Each image becomes one page, up to 50 pages on the free plan.
- Put the pages in order by dragging the cards, or with the Move earlier and Move later arrows.
- Press Edit on any card to crop it to the paper or rotate it.
- Choose the Page size: Fit to image, A4, US Letter, US Legal or A5. For fixed sizes, Orientation set to Auto turns wide images into landscape pages. Pick a Margin.
- Optionally type an Output name, then press Create PDF.
- Download the PDF and open it at full size to check the smallest text before you upload it.
Page size and margins hardly affect file size: the bytes are in the images, so pick whatever the portal expects.
If the tool cannot reach 100 KB
When even the smallest acceptable images do not fit, the result shows the message that the target could not be reached without destroying the image, and you get the smallest PDF it could make. That usually means too many pages for the limit. Remove pages, crop more tightly, or split the document into two uploads.
Troubleshooting
- A page is sideways: the camera orientation is applied automatically. If a photo was taken sideways on purpose, rotate it with Edit before creating the PDF.
- Transparent PNG areas are white: PDF pages are stored as JPEG images, which are flattened onto white.
- Pages are in the wrong order: the PDF follows the order of the cards. Reorder them and create the PDF again.
- The text cannot be selected or searched: pages are images, as with any scan. To get editable text from a page, use Image to Text.
- I already have a PDF that is too big: this tool takes images, not PDFs. Use Compress PDF to shrink an existing PDF, or PDF to Image to turn its pages into images first.
When a 100 KB PDF is the wrong answer
- If the portal accepts separate JPG uploads, one image per field keeps each page sharper than six pages sharing 100 KB.
- If the document was typed on a computer, export it to PDF from the word processor. Real text takes a fraction of the space of a photo of text and stays perfectly sharp.
- For an existing PDF over the limit, Compress PDF is the direct route.
Why build it in the browser
The files people squeeze under 100 KB are usually ID cards, marksheets, bank statements and certificates. Upload-based PDF makers need a copy of each on their server. Here the pages are compressed and assembled in your browser tab and never leave the device, and retrying with different crops costs nothing but a click. Pro raises the limits to 500 images of up to 1 GB each and works offline in the installed app.