blag/post/use-ghostscript-to-convert-pdf-files.mdwn

   1 [[!meta title="Use Ghostscript to convert PDF files"]]
   2 [[!meta date="2012-06-09 19:06"]]
   3 [[!meta author="rohieb"]]
   4 [[!meta license="CC-BY-SA 3.0"]]
   5
   6 If you have a PDF file and want it to be in a specific PDF version (for
   7 example, the print shop where you just ordered some adhesive labels
   8 wants the print master in PDF 1.3, but your Inkscape only exports PDF
   9 1.4), Ghostscript can help:
  10
  11     gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET \
  12       -dBATCH -sOutputFile=new-pdf1.5.pdf original.pdf
  13
  14 (this converts the file `original.pdf` to PDF 1.5 and writes it to
  15 `new-pdf1.5.pdf`)
  16
  17 Also, if you have a huge PDF of several megabyte because there are many
  18 high-resolution pictures in it, Ghostscript can minify it (and shrink
  19 the pictures to 96 dpi) if you use the parameter
  20 `-dPDFSETTINGS=/screen`.
  21
  22 [0]: http://www.ghostscript.com/
  23
  24 [[!tag howto desktop_publishing Ghostscript PDF]]