If the highest setting that fits is not the top one and lands under 8 MB — over a fifth of the limit unused — Bindery tries one setting halfway to the rung above, for a closer fit. Only the lossless pass sits above 220 DPI, so when the top setting fits, that is the result, even well under 10 MB. The card names the setting: images at 150 DPI, quality 60, say, or lossless, every pixel identical. When even the lowest setting stays over 10 MB, Bindery shows the smallest size it reached and which part is too heavy — text, fonts and structure, or the pictures — and offers Split into parts under 10 MB, opening Split with that version and the limit set. The limit applies to the file you download: on the free plan the “Made with Bindery” line is added before the final check, and the search reruns with less room if that tips it over. Same portal every time? Save 10 MB as your default limit.
How it works
- Drop the PDF — Compress opens with 10 MB filled in and starts the search itself
- Watch the Exact size card: lossless cleanup first, then the highest image setting that fits
- Download the file, or pick Split into parts under 10 MB if even the smallest version is over
Questions people ask
Is Bindery’s 10 MB the same 10 MB my portal or mail server checks?
Bindery reads 10 MB as 10,000,000 bytes. Systems that count a megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes allow about 10.49 million, so a file fitted here clears either reading. If the 10 MB is a mail server’s message limit, aim lower: email encoding adds about a third to an attachment. Type 7 into the size box and press Fit instead — a bare number of 50 or below is read as megabytes — and Bindery fits to that.
How much quality does a big scan give up to fit 10 MB?
No more than the first of its ten settings that fits requires. Bindery keeps the highest setting whose measured output fits and names it on the card — images at 120 DPI, quality 58, for instance — so you can judge before downloading. If lossless cleanup does not fit, the best on offer is 220 DPI at high JPEG quality, however much room 10 MB leaves. Text is never rasterised at any setting. Scanned pages get a sharp 1-bit text mask over a low-resolution background, and any OCR text layer is kept. Colour stays unless only the last three settings, which are grayscale, fit. Check signatures and small print at 200% zoom before sending.
My scan is 60 MB — can it get under 10 MB, and what if it cannot?
A file that size needs Pro to open, because the free plan takes files up to 25 MB. Whether it fits depends on what the 60 MB is: page images are the part the settings shrink — scanned pages get a text mask over a low-resolution background — while text, fonts and structure are beyond what any image setting can shrink. Once the file is open, the search either finds a fit or stops at its lowest setting and tells you the smallest size it reached and which of the two is too heavy. Split into parts under 10 MB then takes that smallest version and writes each part to check its size; a single page that alone exceeds 10 MB still becomes its own part and is flagged.