Reducing PDF file-size in Linux

The other day I downloaded a PDF that ended up being a whole lot bigger than I thought. A “whopping” 230MB, which is another deal compared to the 30MB PDF’s that I’m accustomed to. So how to reduce the file-size? Ghostscript to the rescue!

If you have Ghostscript installed, run the following command to reduce the file-size of your PDF:

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -sOutputFile=new_file.pdf original_file.pdf

Now you have a few options here under -dPDFSettings:

  • /screen selects low-resolution output, and the lowest file-size.
  • /ebook selects medium-resolution output, with a medium file-size.
  • /printer and /prepress are both the high-resolution options, which is mainly used for printing PDFs. As you might have guessed, this option gives you the biggest file-size (yes, even bigger than your mother).

The results?

[jorge@(ashitaka):~/Downloads/PDF] du -h *
29M new_file.pdf
230M original_file.pdf

What can I say. I’m a cheap bastard when it comes to storage space, no matter how low the price might be. ;)