How to Compress Construction Photos and Plan Set PDFs on a Mac

Resize first, then set quality. A 4032 × 3024 phone frame is about 12 million pixels, and a job site record rarely needs that many. Fitting it inside 2000 pixels keeps about a quarter of them, which is why Smol’s default resize does most of the work before quality is touched.

Smol compresses a copy and leaves the original beside it with a _compressed suffix by default. Quality runs from 0 to 100 and defaults to 75. For photos where you need to read a stamped label, a rebar spacing or a crack, start at 80 and zoom into one output before running the whole day. Those numbers are starting points we picked, not measured thresholds.

The size saving is real but depends on the file. On 24 small high-quality JPEG test photos (768 × 512), Smol’s defaults made them 69.3% smaller; the full conditions are on the benchmark page. Camera-size phone files will not behave the same, so compress one day of photos and look at the numbers before trusting a plan.

Use Compress for everything on this list. Quality belongs to Compress, not Convert, so a small JPG from an iPhone HEIC comes from Compress with the output format set to JPG.

PDF presets are long-edge pixel caps, not DPI targets: Tiny 600, Small 900, Medium 1200, Large 1800 and Original 2400 pixels. On a 36 inch ARCH D sheet, 2400 pixels works out to about 67 PPI for any raster image on the page; on a 17 inch tabloid it is about 141 PPI. That is why you zoom into a scanned sheet before sending it. Original is not lossless either: it re-encodes and resamples above 2,400 pixels. For the preset logic, read what the PDF presets actually do.

Does a vector plan set shrink?

Barely. On a text-and-vector-only control PDF, Smol 1.0.34 saved 0.3% at every preset, as the presets post measured. Smol shrinks the images inside a PDF, so a plan set grows or shrinks according to the scans, renders and photos in it. If your sheets are pure linework, the fix is at export, covered next.

A plan set PDF is usually large because of embedded images: scanned markups, site photos pasted into sheets, and high-resolution renders. Reduce those images, either at export from the design software or afterward with Smol, and the file drops. Vector linework is already small.

• At export: Autodesk says high-DPI raster images make an exported Revit PDF large and calls 300 DPI or lower the best practice.
• In Archicad, the PDF options have a “Limit image resolution to” setting that leaves images below the limit as they are, and a “Compress all images” choice that converts to JPG at 80%.
• After export or after scanning: run the PDF through Smol with Small or Medium. For scanned markups, compressing a scanned PDF covers what happens to searchable text.

Do not use Preview’s Reduce File Size on a plan set. It enlarged a 21-page text PDF to 111.8% in a test, as this post shows. Smol does not edit, merge, split or sign PDFs, so assemble and sign the set first, then compress a copy and check it.

For email, personal Gmail accounts stop at 25 MB per message; work and school accounts follow what the Workspace administrator sets, per Google’s help page. Email encoding adds roughly 37%, so aim near 18 MB for a 25 MB cap, as the PDF-for-email post measured.

Both are set by the platform or building department, not by Smol, and they differ by account and jurisdiction. Read the cap in your own Procore tool, ask your account admin, or find it on the permit portal’s upload screen or submission checklist, then compress to that number.

The same method works for Autodesk Construction Cloud, Bluebeam Studio or a shared drive. Write the cap for photos and for documents on a card in the truck, and use the settings table above to choose a starting point. Smol sets quality and pixel size, not output bytes, so it cannot promise a file lands under a cap. Sort the output folder by size and rerun any file that misses at a lower quality or a smaller maximum dimension.

Reviewers need to read dimensions, notes and stamps, so protect legibility first. Run Medium, zoom to the smallest text and the seal, and drop to Small only if it still reads. If a portal still rejects the file, split the set by discipline in your PDF editor before compressing, since Smol does not split files. The general version is in when a PDF is too big to upload.

For job site photos storage, keep the originals of anything that may matter later, such as defects, concealed conditions and signed-off inspections, and keep compressed copies for everyday progress records and sharing. Smol writes copies and leaves originals alone by default, so the split is built into the output.

• Sort by project and date before compressing, so the output folder mirrors the job.
• Set iPhones to Most Compatible (Settings, Camera, Formats) if a crew keeps hitting JPG-only upload screens; photos then save as JPEG.
• Turn location off in the Camera settings for photos that leave the company, and rely on Smol’s default metadata strip as the second check. See stripping GPS from photos. Stripped metadata also removes copyright and contact fields.
• Watched folders can make already-optimized files larger, a known defect described in the watched folder post. Use one only for a folder of fresh camera exports.

1. 1

   Collect the day into one folder

   AirDrop or import phone photos into a dated folder per job. Include PDFs and any video in the same folder; Smol takes mixed batches.
2. 2

   Drop the folder on Smol

   Drag the whole folder into the window. Set JPG, quality 75 to 80 and the maximum dimension, and pick a PDF preset for any PDFs.
3. 3

   Compress and read the receipt

   Smol shows per-file savings. Sort the output by size and look at the largest files first.
4. 4

   Check one photo and one PDF

   Zoom a photo to the label you care about and a PDF to its smallest text. If either is soft, raise quality or the preset and rerun.
5. 5

   Upload or send the copies

   Upload the _compressed copies to the project platform or portal, and file the originals where your records policy says. Batches of PDFs work the same way; see batch compressing PDFs.

• Your crew uses Windows or Android. Smol runs on macOS only.
• You need pixel-identical photos for a dispute or claim. Smol always re-encodes images, so keep the originals and compress copies only.
• You need to redact, OCR, sign, merge or split a PDF. Smol does none of these.
• Your plan sheets are pure vector linework. Expect almost no saving; fix the export settings instead.
• You need a hard guarantee that a file lands under a byte cap. Smol sets quality and pixels, so you must check the result.

For closely related jobs, see our pages for architects’ drawing PDFs and home inspectors and appraisers.

Cost for an office: Solo is $29 once for one Mac. Team is $49 once for three Macs. Enterprise is $20 per seat, once, for 5 to 500 seats. A four-Mac office buys Team plus Solo. There is no free trial and purchases are not refundable; the homepage demo runs in the browser and is not the app. Presets live on one Mac, so write your settings down and recreate them on each machine. See pricing.