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Last active April 18, 2024 14:53
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Instructions for PDF compression via Ghostscript on Windows
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gs-windows.md

Ghostscript PDF compression on Windows

Installation

  1. Download and install Ghostscript for windows (http://downloads.ghostscript.com/public/gs916w32.exe)
  2. Optional - Add the ghostscript directory to the path environment variable
    • Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables
    • Add ;C:\Program Files (x86)\gs\gs9.16\bin to th end of the PATH variable

Usage

  1. Open CMD & Navigate to the correct folder

    • Alternatively shift+right click in the correct folder on windows explorer > Open command window here

  2. Set the local path to include the GS binaries (If not set globally) SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files (x86)\gs\gs9.16\bin

  3. Use the following command to compress source.pdf into compressed.pdf (Change as required)

    gswin32c -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf source.pdf

Quality vs Filesize

It is possible to further reduce filesize by lowering quality using the -dPDFSETTINGS argument with values of /ebook or /screen, however this severely reduced image quality for the example PDF I tried.

gswin32c -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf source.pdf


gswin32c -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=compressed.pdf source.pdf
@SaberGameDev
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Literally just saved me missing a deadline for a report, thank you so so much

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