Why Your PDF Is Too Big for the Upload Portal – and How to Fix It

Where the size comes from

A PDF made from scans is mostly pictures. A modern phone takes photos of 12 megapixels or more, which is far more detail than a printed A4 page needs. Each page carries that full photo, so a five-page application can easily reach many megabytes.

Colour also costs space. A page stored in colour holds three channels of information; the same page in grayscale holds one, and in black and white even less. Text documents rarely need colour.

Make it smaller without making it unreadable

1. Scan in the right mode: B&W or Grayscale for plain text pages, Color only for pages with photos, stamps or coloured logos.
2. Use a sensible resolution. Around 150–200 pixels per inch of paper is enough for reading on screen and for normal printing; very fine print or signatures may need a little more.
3. Open Compress PDF and enter the target size the portal gives you (for example 200 KB). The tool lowers image detail step by step until the file fits.
4. Open the result and zoom in on the smallest text and the signature. If they are blurry, choose a slightly larger target or switch busy pages to grayscale.
5. Do not compress the same file again and again. Each round of JPEG compression loses more detail; always start again from the original scan.

When the limit is very small

Some forms allow only 100 KB or less for several pages. In that case remove what is not required (blank backs of pages, duplicate copies), put only the requested pages in the file, and use B&W for everything that has no photo.

If one page must stay in colour (for example a page with your photograph), keep that page in colour and make all other pages black and white. Mixing modes inside one PDF is fine.