I took some photos and made a huge PDF of them on Omnigraffle (OSX).
Now I need to email that PDF, but since every photo is 5MB, the file is huge. I don't need the high-res photos when I email it though.
So what program will take my PDF, resize all the images to low resolution and save it?
5 Answers
Open the PDF in Preview, Select File » Save as…, and select the Quartz Filter named Reduce File Size.
Use ColorSync Utility to fine-tune the filter. Duplicate Reduce File Size and change settings afterwards.
I suggest you first try clearing all values from the Image Sampling block, except Resolution, which should be around 150-300 DPI, depending on how much you want to save.
Inspired from Max Glenister & Milan Kupcevic, Thanks to Burgi, explanation of the example script : It reduce PDF size from Massive to Small using ebook filter
brew install ghostscript # aptitude work too if you do not have brew compresspdf() { echo 'Usage: compresspdf [input file] [output file] [screen|ebook|printer|prepress]' gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -dPDFSETTINGS=/${3:-"screen"} -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -sOutputFile="$2" "$1" } compresspdf "Massive.pdf" "Small.pdf" ebook Gs Options:
-dPDFSETTINGS=/screen (screen-view-only quality, 72 dpi images) -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook (low quality, 150 dpi images) -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer (high quality, 300 dpi images) -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress (high quality, color preserving, 300 dpi imgs) -dPDFSETTINGS=/default (almost identical to /screen) I don't know of a program that will do what you want, but an alternative to produce the same end result would be to compress the images with a graphics program first, and then put them into a document and convert it to PDF.
Based on @Mickaël's answer, if you don't want to install gs to your machine with all of its dependencies, you can also convert the PDF files within a docker container:
docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app -w /app minidocks/ghostscript -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -sOutputFile="/app/compressed.pdf" /app/source.pdf Thank you @Mickaël, for your awesome solution,
I've created a minor improvement to control the splitting page -> the default action, and some examples for the tool -
save the file -
#!/bin/bash # inspired by: # # usage() { cat<<EOF Usage: ${0} <input file> <output file> [screen|ebook|printer|prepress] EOF } # Examples: # Note: Ghostscript must be installed on your system # Note that <n> represents the number of pages in the original document; # * Only split file to pages; no range available - # \$ ${0} someFile.pdf # will create the following single page files: # someFile_page_0001.pdf, someFile_page_0002.pdf someFile_page_0003.pdf, someFile_page_000<n>.pdf # * Split page to custom output file name - # \$ ${0} someFile.pdf newFileName_pageNumer_%2d.pdf # will create the following single page files: # newFileName_pageNumer_01.pdf, newFileName_pageNumer_02.pdf, newFileName_pageNumer_03.pdf, newFileName_pageNumer_0<n>.pdf # * Only reduce quality of pdf file !without! splitting - # \$ ${0} someFile.pdf newFileName.pdf ebook # will create the following single file: newFileName.pdf with reduced quality # * Reduce quality !and! split pdf to single pages - # \$ ${0} someFile.pdf newFileName_%2d.pdf ebook # will create the following single page files, with lower qualuty # newFileName_page_01.pdf, newFileName_page_02.pdf, newFileName_page_03.pdf, newFileName_page_0<n>.pdf ### main ### DEFAULT_QUALITY="printer" numberOfArguments=$# case $numberOfArguments in 1) # only split the file fileNameInput=$1 fileNameOutput="${fileNameInput}_page_%04d.pdf" pdfSettings=$DEFAULT_QUALITY ;; 2) # user supplied input and output files fileNameInput=$1 fileNameOutput=$2 pdfSettings=$DEFAULT_QUALITY ;; 3) # user supplied input and output files fileNameInput=$1 fileNameOutput=$2 pdfSettings=$3 ;; *) # incorrect syntax print usage and exit echo "Error: Illegal number of parameters." usage exit 1 ;; esac if [[ ! -f $fileNameInput ]]; then echo "Error: ${fileNameInput} not found!" exit 2 fi if ! which gs > /dev/null 2>&1; then echo "Error: Looks like the Ghostscript package is not installed on your system." exit 3 fi cmdToExecute="gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH \ -dPDFSETTINGS=/$pdfSettings -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -sOutputFile=$fileNameOutput $fileNameInput" echo -e "Executing:\n "$cmdToExecute $cmdToExecute # finish script with the return code from gs command exit $? 
