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guifromrio/compress-pdf-with-gs.md

Created August 30, 2013 14:39
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Compress PDF files with ghostscript
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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

@palashkulsh
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palashkulsh commented Feb 25, 2021 •
edited

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

@pateltejasmca
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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"

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

@Kurt-Mueller
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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?

@Kurt-Mueller
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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.

@ifthakharriyad
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ifthakharriyad commented Jun 20, 2021 •
edited

@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?

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