pdf2book
Make any pdf in format A4 a book in forma A5 and bind it e.g. with rings.
How it works (schematically): PDF -> PS -> Scramble Pages (like in a book) -> pack two pages on one page -> PDF
This does the job:
1 #!/bin/bash
2
3 FILE_PATH="$1"
4 FILE="$(basename "$FILE_PATH")"
5 TITLE="${FILE%%\.pdf}"
6
7 pdftops "$FILE_PATH" "$TITLE".ps
8 psbook -q "$TITLE".ps "$TITLE"_BOOK.ps
9 psnup -q -l -pa4 -Pa4 -2 \
10 -b1mm -m1mm \
11 -s0.9 \
12 "$TITLE"_BOOK.ps \
13 "$TITLE"_SIG.ps
14 ps2pdf "$TITLE"_SIG.ps
15 rm "$TITLE"{,_BOOK,_SIG}.ps
- Print duplex short edge on A4
- auto center
- no scaling
- no border control
- cut A4 in half
- bind
Reduce Size of PDF
High-quality scans can be huge, since the images are simply embedded. This a little script that reduces pdfs in size effectively using ghostscript.
1 aptitude install ghostscript
Create a script which is in a path within your environment varibale PATH e.g. /usr/local/bin/pdf_minify.sh
1 #!/bin/bash
2
3 ### INIT
4 SRC="$1"
5 DST="$2"
6
7 ### SANITIZE
8 if [ -z "$SRC" ]; then
9 echo "Please specify a source file."
10 exit 2
11 fi
12
13 if [ -z "$DST" ]; then
14 echo "Please specify a destination file."
15 exit 2
16 fi
17
18 if [ "$SRC" = "$DST" ]; then
19 echo "Both files must not match."
20 exit 2
21 fi
22
23 set -eu
24 ps2pdf -dDetectDuplicateImages=true \
25 -dCompressFonts=true \
26 -dEmbedAllFonts=false \
27 -dSubsetFonts=true \
28 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \
29 "$SRC" "$DST"
- Make it executable
1 chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/pdf_minify.sh
- Hint: Change to destination directory and wrap it in a for-loop:
Comparison:
1 % ll -Rh
2 .:
3 insgesamt 7.3M
4 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 842K Jul 4 14:25 G1.pdf
5 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 4.3M Jun 17 11:13 G2.pdf
6 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 976K Jul 4 14:24 K1.pdf
7 drwxr-xr-x 1 user user 326 Jul 4 14:47 minimal
8 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 1.3M Jul 4 14:32 R1.pdf
9
10 ./minimal:
11 insgesamt 1.8M
12 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 69K Jul 4 14:47 G1.pdf
13 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 1.2M Jul 4 14:47 G2.pdf
14 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 270K Jul 4 14:47 K1.pdf
15 -rw-r--r-- 1 user user 343K Jul 4 14:47 R1.pdf