When you're asked for 1 MB
- Web forms with several attachments, where the limit applies to all of them together and has to be shared out.
- Banking and insurance mobile apps that ask for photographed receipts or proofs.
- Emails to corporate accounts with size filters.
What quality to expect at 1 MB
In a real test with a four-page document with photos that weighed 5.04 MB, the result was 977 KB, rasterized at 110 DPI: perfectly readable on screen and in print. With longer documents, the resolution drops proportionally.
If your file is already under 1 MB, we give it back untouched: there's no point recompressing something that already fits. And if the target turns out to be impossible, you get the lightest version we could achieve, with a clear notice of the final size.
Common questions about this size
How many pages fit in 1 MB?
There's no fixed number, because it depends on what's on each page: scanned black-and-white text takes up much less than a color photo. As a practical guide, a scanned document of four to ten pages fits in 1 MB while keeping a comfortable reading resolution. From twenty pages on, consider 2 MB.
The form asks for 1 MB: per file or in total?
Read it carefully, because it changes the strategy. If the limit is per file, compress each one to 1 MB. If it applies to the whole submission and you're attaching three documents, the real target for each is about 330 KB. You can load them all here at once and set that common target for the batch.