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.

2

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)

6

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

1

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 $?

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