reducing PDF file size in Fedora

[Ranjan Maitra]

Hi,

I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...

But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
result in Fedora?

Many thanks and best wishes,
Ranjan

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[Alan Evans]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 6:17 AM, Ranjan Maitra wrote:

>  But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the
> same
>  result in Fedora?
>
>  
I've used ghostscript to "optimize" some very large PDF documents.
Maybe
not exactly what you want, but it worked pretty well in my case, thus:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook
-dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=<output file> <input file>

[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/28/2012 04:23 AM, Robyn Bergeron wrote:
>  I have occasionally found that converting to postscript and then back
> to
>  pdf will result in a smaller file size, particularly when there are
>  images involved. 
You probably don't need to change the format.  ps2pdf is just a shell 
script that runs gs with some of the options listed in the links I 
previously mentioned.  As far as I can tell, you can save yourself a 
step and run ps2pdf on the original pdf file.

[Robyn Bergeron]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Gordon Messmer <yinyang(a)eburg.com&gt; wrote:

>  On 12/27/2012 06:17 AM, Ranjan Maitra wrote:
>
> > I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora.
> >
>
>  As others have noted, your ability to do so depends on the specifics of
>  your file, which you haven't shared.
>
>  You could use ghostscript to reduce quality (resolution) and size:
>  http://www.ubuntugeek.com/**ubuntu-tiphowto-reduce-adobe-**
>
> acrobat-file-size-from-**command-line.html<http://www.ubuntugeek.com/u...
>
>  You can also try removing embedded fonts.  Examples are included here:
>  http://stackoverflow.com/**questions/10450120/optimize-**
>
> pdf-files-with-ghostscript-or-**other<http://stackoverflow.com/questio...
>
>  All of ghostscripts options are documenTed here:
>
> http://ghostscript.com/doc/**current/Ps2pdf.htm<http://ghostscript.com...

I have occasionally found that converting to postscript and then back to
pdf will result in a smaller file size, particularly when there are images
involved.  (In my case, lots of receipts mailed to me that were
photographed rather than scanned, and then converted to giant .pdfs.)

Doing a pdf2ps filename.pdf (which will result in filename.ps) and then
ps2pdf filename.ps newfilename.pdf usually does the trick for me without
having to dive into lots of options and flags (though they are available).
 It's quick and dirty, but gets me what i need most of the time.

-robyn


>  Finally, you could build pdfsizeopt.  There isn't a fedora package, as far
>  as I can tell:
>  http://code.google.com/p/**pdfsizeopt/<http://code.google.com/p/pdfsiz...
>
>
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[Gordon Messmer]

On 12/27/2012 06:17 AM, Ranjan Maitra wrote:
>  I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. 
As others have noted, your ability to do so depends on the specifics of 
your file, which you haven't shared.

You could use ghostscript to reduce quality (resolution) and size:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-tiphowto-reduce-adobe-acrobat-file-size-...

You can also try removing embedded fonts.  Examples are included here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10450120/optimize-pdf-files-with-ghost...

All of ghostscripts options are documenTed here:
http://ghostscript.com/doc/current/Ps2pdf.htm

Finally, you could build pdfsizeopt.  There isn't a fedora package, as 
far as I can tell:
http://code.google.com/p/pdfsizeopt/

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 16:10:22 +0100,
   Reindl Harald <h.reindl(a)thelounge.net&gt; wrote:
> Am 27.12.2012 16:05, schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
> > On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
> >   Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
> >> be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
> >>
> >>
> http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...
> >>
> >> But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> >> result in Fedora?
> >
> > Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz?
>
> because this is not a solution for the question
>
> how do you imagine to open such files on different OS?
> as example on windows even winrar can not unpack tar.xz
> PDF is for exchange documents 
He didn't provide any other requirements than that he needed the file to 
be smaller. He may or may not need to be able to open the file on Windows.
Maybe he just needs it to fit on a USB drive he has. Without more information 
using a compression program seems like an easy possible solution. And even 
on windows 7z can be used to uncompress files compressed with xz.

[Dale Dellutri]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 8:17 AM, Ranjan Maitra
<maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
>  Hi,
>
>  I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora.
> ... 
You don't give enough details to help much, so I'll ask some questions.

1. Is the content all text?
2. What tool created it?
3. Are there images in the PDF?
4. How much compression from its current size do you need?
  (What its current size, what does it need to be?)

If the content is all text, and you used some standard tool to
create it, it may already be compressed as much as it can be.
If there are images, have you made sure that the images are
as low-res as possible, and as cropped as possible (before adding
them to the document)?  Smaller image files will make a smaller
PDF.

Then, you can get a long list of PDF tools:
  # yum list all | grep -i pdf

-- 
Dale Dellutri

[Bill Davidsen]

agraham wrote:
>  Assuming you have source file(s) that are not already PDF, use Open
> Office and
>  export it as PDF at which point you have all the scaling/compression options
>  available.
>  
The way to get a smaller file is not to compress what you have, but to generate 
smaller PDF in the first place. Unfortunately PDF doesn't do a great job of 
selecting compression options for you, so you have to do the "think work" for 
it, choose compression (jpeg vs. lz), and such.

Hint: if you have a lot of graphs, line drawings, and similar, reduce them to 
b/w (if appropriate) PNG, rather than greyscale and/or jpeg. Pages in b/w can be 
encoded with jbig and will be tiny compared to almost any other format.

>  On 12/27/2012 03:05 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
> > Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
> >> be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
> >>
> >>
> http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> >> result in Fedora?
> >
> > Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz?
>  

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

[Ranjan Maitra]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 09:05:12 -0600 Bruno Wolff III <bruno(a)wolff.to&gt;
wrote:

>  On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
>     Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
>  >Hi,
>  >
>  >I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
>  >be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
>  >
>
> >http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/acr7optimize.pdf
>  >
>  >But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
>  >result in Fedora?
>  
>  Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz? 
But unfortunately, I have to submit a pdf file to ScholarOne.

Ranjan

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[Bruno Wolff III]

On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
   Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
> be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
>
> http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...
>
> But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> result in Fedora? 
Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz?

[Ranjan Maitra]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 10:41:17 -0500 Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com&gt;
wrote:

>  agraham wrote:
>  > Assuming you have source file(s) that are not already PDF, use Open Office and
>  > export it as PDF at which point you have all the scaling/compression options
>  > available.
>  >
>  The way to get a smaller file is not to compress what you have, but to generate 
>  smaller PDF in the first place. Unfortunately PDF doesn't do a great job of 
>  selecting compression options for you, so you have to do the "think work" for 
>  it, choose compression (jpeg vs. lz), and such.
>  
>  Hint: if you have a lot of graphs, line drawings, and similar, reduce them to 
>  b/w (if appropriate) PNG, rather than greyscale and/or jpeg. Pages in b/w can be 
>  encoded with jbig and will be tiny compared to almost any other format. 
Thanks, I was hoping that there might be a more ready solution but
this (converting all pdf image files to png - and I had north of 50 pdf
files) is exactly what I have now done, using ImageMagick and a perl
script as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

my @pdfs = `ls *.pdf`;

for my $pdf (@pdfs) {
        chomp $pdf;
        my $file = $pdf;
        $file =~ s/.pdf$//;
        print STDERR "convert $file.pdf $file.png\n";
        `convert $file.pdf $file.png`;
}


Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions! The file size comes down
from 36 MB to 6.4 MB.

Ranjan
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[Frank Cox]

On Thu, 27 Dec 2012 08:17:56 -0600
Ranjan Maitra wrote:

>  I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. 
http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Web_optimised_PDF#compress-newsletter.pl

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[agraham]

Assuming you have source file(s) that are not already PDF, use Open 
Office and export it as PDF at which point you have all the 
scaling/compression options available.

On 12/27/2012 03:05 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
>  On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
>  Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
> > be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
> >
> >
> http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...
> >
> >
> > But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> > result in Fedora?
>
>  Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz?

[Reindl Harald]

Am 27.12.2012 16:05, schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
>  On Thu, Dec 27, 2012 at 08:17:56 -0600,
>    Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.ignored(a)inbox.com&gt; wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I need to reduce the file size of my PDF in Fedora. Apparently, I may
> > be able to use Adobe Acrobat Professsional to do this:
> >
> >
> http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/acrobat/articles/acr7optimize/a...
> >
> > But I was wondering if there is an open source way to achieve the same
> > result in Fedora?
>  
>  Why not compress it with a compression tool such as xz? 
because this is not a solution for the question

how do you imagine to open such files on different OS?
as example on windows even winrar can not unpack tar.xz
PDF is for exchange documents