Compress PDF files with ghostscript

compress-pdf-with-gs.md

This can reduce files to ~15% of their size (2.3M to 345K, in one case) with no obvious degradation of quality.

ghostscript -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

Other options for PDFSETTINGS:

• /screen selects low-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "Screen Optimized" setting.
• /ebook selects medium-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "eBook" setting.
• /printer selects output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "Print Optimized" setting.
• /prepress selects output similar to Acrobat Distiller "Prepress Optimized" setting.
• /default selects output intended to be useful across a wide variety of uses, possibly at the expense of a larger output file.

Source: http://ghostscript.com/doc/current/Ps2pdf.htm

@csantosburguete you could try -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook to preserve links, but this has a lower quality for images and text, you might want to tune compression with settings after that option

For me some reason it didn't work . Simply Go to LibreOffice open the pdf file in Draw. select "Export to PDF" and reduce the DPI to 150 and quality to 50% or so you're done.

Note that by default Ghostscript removes hyperlinks from PDFs. To preserve links, include the flag -dPrinted=false.

find . -name '*.pdf' | while read pdf; do gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile="${pdf}_new.pdf" "$pdf"; done

The use of LibreOffice had not occurred to me. MANY THANKS for pointing in that direction. I just reduced a 140MB monster to 6 MB. This was a newsletter with many illustrations. The final result is quite useable on the screen, and will be much easier for the online users to download. The original version (140MB), of course, was sent to the printer for the mailed newsletter.

Getting parameters correct for GhostScript is very frustrating. Glad to see that LibreOffice folks have connected with a good set of tools.

/ebook is my favorite. 71 MB to 4.9 MB!

I'm using GS to compress PDF files. Sometimes it works smoothly but sometimes it behaves strangely. I don't know why. Can somebody help me with this?

I'm using the following command to convert a large pdf :

gs \ -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \ -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 \ -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \ -dEmbedAllFonts=true \ -dSubsetFonts=true \ -dAutoRotatePages=/None \ -dColorImageDownsampleType=/Bicubic \ -dColorImageResolution=72 \ -dGrayImageDownsampleType=/Bicubic \ -dGrayImageResolution=72 \ -dMonoImageDownsampleType=/Subsample \ -dMonoImageResolution=72 \ -sOutputFile=output.pdf \ input.pdf

My input file size is around 12 MB and before completion of the script, I gets a message of server timeout.

• Does gs not work for large files?
• Also sometimes output is larger than the input, how can I handle this problem?

@rahimnagori I have a 17MB file and the command you produced takes 30 sec on a 5year old machine. The problem is that it compresses some images too much, and size drops only to 11MB. The other commands suggested here with ghostscript doesn't change the size at all :/

Source: http://ghostscript.com/doc/current/Ps2pdf.htm

Dead link. :(

Update: try this: https://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/VectorDevices.htm#PSPDF_IN:

Controls and features specific to PostScript and PDF input

-dPDFSETTINGS=configuration

Presets the "distiller parameters" to one of four predefined settings:

• /screen selects low-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller (up to version X) "Screen Optimized" setting.
• /ebook selects medium-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller (up to version X) "eBook" setting.
• /printer selects output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "Print Optimized" (up to version X) setting.
• /prepress selects output similar to Acrobat Distiller "Prepress Optimized" (up to version X) setting.
• /default selects output intended to be useful across a wide variety of uses, possibly at the expense of a larger output file.

The exact settings for each of these are shown in the dozens of options in this table: https://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/VectorDevices.htm#distillerparams.

I refer this thread quite frequently and sometimes when ps cann't do the satisfactory job then imagemagick helps

convert -density 200x200 -quality 60 -compress jpeg input.pdf output.pdf

My digital signature removed after executing this command. I need that signature in my pdf. What should i do ?
gswin64c.exe -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="new.pdf" "old.pdf"

from what i know you'll have to resign new file as file is changed in after running the command.

Works as expected on a Mac/mojave, gs 9.53.3_1 with pdfs with OCR.
View with preview it is ok, but when printed on an Epson WF-C5790 text ist white on a black background.
Is there an explanation for that and a solution?

Works as expected on a Mac/mojave, gs 9.53.3_1 with pdfs with OCR.
View with preview it is ok, but when printed on an Epson WF-C5790 text ist white on a black background.
Is there an explanation for that and a solution?

The problem only occurs if printed via Airprint. pdfwrite modifies the pdf in a way, the Airprint driver on the EPSON WF-5790 produces a black background. Printed via the standard macos driver the print is OK.

@firstdoit How can I compress a pdf in a different directory using this command? /books/book.pdf instead of input.pdf Doesn't compress the book.pdf.
I am using ghostscript4js in my node app to compress pdf using the commands but the pdf needs to be at the same directory as the server.js file to be able to compress it. Since I want to keep my pdfs in a separate directory (i.e. /books) I wonder how can I do that?
And also can I output into a different directory?