ALL PDF TOOLS37
PDF Resizer
PDF Resizer — Change Page Size or File Size
One dropped PDF, two jobs: resize the pages, or shrink the file — switch between them freely.
About PDF Resizer
"Resize a PDF" means two genuinely different things and people mean both, so this page offers both over the same dropped file and lets you switch between them without uploading it twice. Page size changes the physical sheet: choose A3, A4, A5, Letter, Legal or Tabloid, portrait or landscape, and either scale the page content to fit the new sheet and centre it or change the page box only and let a smaller sheet crop into the content. It is the same component the dedicated Change PDF Page Size tool uses, not a second implementation, so the two pages cannot end up describing the same operation differently — including its one real caveat, which is that a form field's stored appearance and the font size recorded with it are not rewritten, so a field that is filled in again after the resize can have its text redrawn too small for the box. The rectangles themselves move and scale with the content, so links and fields stay over what they belong to. File size makes the document smaller on disk without changing how a single page looks: objects nothing references any more are dropped, streams that arrived with no compression at all are deflated, and the file is repacked into object streams behind a cross-reference stream. Be clear about what that second half is not. It has no image encoder — a stream that already carries a filter, which is every embedded JPEG, is skipped by design — so it never re-encodes or downsamples a photograph, and a PDF that is mostly photos or scanned pages often comes back the same size to the byte. The wins come from structure, and on a document carrying wasted objects or raw streams they can be a third or more. There is no quality slider and no target size: you cannot ask it for under 500 KB. It makes one pass, reports what that was worth, and if the rewrite would not come out smaller you get your original bytes back.
Questions
Should I resize the page size or the file size?
Page size changes the physical sheet — A4, Letter, Legal and the rest — which is what you want when a document has to print or fit a template. File size leaves every page looking identical and makes the document smaller on disk, which is what you want for an email or an upload limit. The switch at the top of the panel moves between them and keeps the file you dropped.
Can I ask for a PDF under a specific size, like 500 KB?
No. There is no target-size mode and no quality slider, because the underlying operation has nothing to trade away — it makes one lossless structural pass and reports what that was worth. Any tool that hits an arbitrary target does it by re-encoding your images, which this one never does.
Why did my scanned PDF come back exactly the same size?
Because it is almost entirely image data that is already compressed, and this tool never re-encodes or downsamples an image — a stream that already carries a compression filter is skipped by design. Scans and photo-heavy PDFs routinely come back byte-for-byte identical. The savings here come from structure: unreferenced objects, uncompressed streams, an old-style cross-reference table.
Do I have to upload the file again to switch modes?
No. The file is held by the page, not by either half, so flipping between Page size and File size keeps it loaded. Only that half's own settings and any finished output are dropped, since neither means anything under the other operation.
How is the file-size half different from Compress PDF?
It is not — it runs the same engine and gives the same answer, including handing back your original bytes when the rewrite would not be smaller. What this page adds is the page-size half over the same dropped file, so you can try both without starting again.
Is my file uploaded to a server?
No. Transmute processes everything locally in your browser using JavaScript and WebAssembly. Your files never leave your device — there is no server, no upload, no cloud processing.