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Reduce PDF File Size in Linux (Command line)

We can reduce pdf file size using either GhostScript or ps2pdf tools

1) Using GhostScript

$ gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf


-dPDFSETTINGS Option     Description
-dPDFSETTINGS=/screen     Has a lower quality and smaller size. (72 dpi)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook     Has a better quality, but has a slightly larger size (150 dpi)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress     Output is of a higher size and quality (300 dpi)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer     Output is of a printer type quality (300 dpi)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/default     Selects the output which is useful for multiple purposes. Can cause large PDFS.

2) Using ps2pdf

$ ps2pdf input.pdf output.pdf

or you can specify -dPDFSETTINGS as fellow :

$ ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook input.pdf output.pdf