Smaller and Faster PDF Flatten
PDF Flatten now produces much smaller files and runs faster when it flattens text. Text-heavy results are about 3 times smaller, and conversion is about 2.6 times faster on average.
Highlights
- Each letter shape is stored once. With
FlattenTexton, every character becomes a vector path so the text cannot be selected or copied. Before, each character got its own copy of that path, so a document with tens of thousands of characters could grow many times over. Now each distinct letter shape is drawn once and reused wherever it appears. - About 3 times smaller. Across 110 test PDFs the flattened output went from 657 MB to 218 MB in total. One customer document that grew to 8.5 MB now comes out at 1.15 MB.
- About 2.6 times faster on average on text-heavy files, ranging from 1.3 to 3.6 times.
- Same result. The text still turns into vector paths, so it stays read-only and keeps its original look.
Try it out
- PDF Flatten - API sandbox: pdf-to-flatten