The PDF Shrinker

Reduce PDF file size by applying Jpeg compression to all images embedded in the PDF.

How to use

Requirements

Java SE8 or newer

Option 1: Build from source

Download code and build using Maven

Option 2: Download pre-built app

All operating systems:
shrink-pdf-beta-6-distr.zip

Unpack the archive wherever. On Windows, run shrink-pdf.bat. On Mac or Linux, run shrink-pdf.sh.

Command Line Arguments

The PDF Shrinker supports command line arguments for automation. From the install directory, do:

java -cp "jar/*" edu.emory.cellbio.ShrinkPDF
    [<input> [<output>]] [-q <quality>] [-h | --headless]

<input> — Path of the PDF file to shrink

<output> — Path to save the shrunken PDF

-q <quality> — Compression quality parameter. Number between 0 (low quality, small file size) and 1 (high quality, large file size). Default, 0.85.

-h | --headless — If this flag is set, the app will use default parameter values if user values are not set. Otherwise, user input will be requested.

Release notes

beta-6

• Update to Java SE8
• Set executable permissions for the shell script launcher
• Update to use the latest PDFBox version

beta-5

• Remove transparency before encoding jpeg images

beta-4

• Update to use PDFBox version 2.0.16
• Fix security vulnerability

beta-3

• Support for larger PDF documents

beta-2

• Support for command line arguments

beta-1

• Extracts each image object in the PDF, applies jpeg compression, and replaces the original image

• Does not check original image format. If original image format is already compressed (jpeg, jbig2, or jpeg2000), it will be recompressed as jpeg. This will always result in quality loss, but depending on the compression settings, it may increase file size.

Dependencies

Uses Apache PDFBox to read, parse, and write PDF files (included in the pre-built app download)

Contact

Benjamin Nanes
Web: https://b.nanes.org
Github: bnanes

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