Q: I cropped a PDF document but the physical file size remained the same. Why is that so?
A: Cropping, in PDF Studio and other PDF editors, does not reduce the file size because the information outside the cropping area is only hidden, not actually discarded.
In the PDF Standards, set in place by Adobe, the crop area is the visible page area in the document. So when using the cropping feature, users do not actually cut parts of the pages or discard the cropped content but rather set the crop area or crop margins. The content cropped from pages is still be part of your document. This is why after cropping a document the size of the page will not actually get any smaller.
If you wish to reduce the file size, you can try using our PDF Optimizer feature instead.
