Why Is My Compressed PDF Blurry?

Compression rebuilds each page as a JPEG image at a resolution and quality tied to the setting you chose. Maximum Compression uses the lowest scale (0.6) and JPEG quality (0.5), which shrinks file size the most but also reduces sharpness — especially on pages with small text or fine detail. If a compressed page looks blurry, that's expected at that setting, not a malfunction. Choosing Medium or High Quality trades some file-size reduction for a sharper result. If you need to preserve both a small size and readable text, try Medium first and only drop to Maximum Compression if the file is still too large afterward.