Reduce the size of a PDF file
=============================

Author: Momchil Ivanov <momchil@xaxo.eu>
Date  : 2019.10.10

Introduction
------------

  This article contains notes on how to reduce the size of a PDF
  file. Usually one would like to reduce the size of scanned
  documents.

ps2pdf
--------

  Use ps2pdf:

    $ ps2pdf input.pdf output.pdf


ghostscript
-----------

  Use ghostscript:
  
    $ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
         -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
         -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen \
         -dNOPAUSE \
         -dQUIET \
         -dBATCH \
         -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

  The settings are:

    -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen lower quality, smaller size. (72 dpi)

    -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook for better quality, but slightly larger pdfs. (150 dpi)

    -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress output similar to Acrobat Distiller
     "Prepress Optimized" setting (300 dpi)

    -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer selects output similar to the Acrobat
     Distiller "Print Optimized" setting (300 dpi)

    -dPDFSETTINGS=/default selects output intended to be useful across
     a wide variety of uses, possibly at the expense of a larger
     output file

References
----------

  1: https://askubuntu.com/questions/113544/how-can-i-reduce-the-file-size-of-a-scanned-pdf-file