📦 PDF Batch Processor

A Bash utility to optimize, monochrome-ify, and strip content from PDFs in bulk.

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📖 Table of Contents

1. Features
2. Installation
3. Usage
4. Configuration
5. Log
6. Tested Environment
7. Sample Compression
8. References

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🌟 Features

• Compression: Choose from presets (screen, ebook, printer, prepress, or default)
• Monochrome Conversion: Transform color PDFs to B/W
• Selective Stripping: Drop images, text, and vectors as needed

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🔧 Installation

# Clone repo
git clone https://github.com/tezzytezzy/pdf-batch-processor.git
cd pdf-batch-processor/

# Make executable
chmod +x pdf-batch-processor.sh

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🚀 Usage

./pdf-batch-processor.sh

• Processes every .pdf in the current directory
• Outputs into compressed_files/
• Generates compression_report.log

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🛠 Configuration

hp@HP:~$ ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh -h
Usage: pdf_batch_compressor.sh [OPTIONS]

Compresses all .pdf files in the script’s directory into
a fresh ./compressed_files/ folder and emits a log.

Options:
  -p, --preset PRE         PDFSETTINGS preset. One of:
                           screen, ebook, printer, prepress, default
  -c, --color COL          Color strategy: Gray or LeaveColorUnchanged
      --gray               Shortcut for --color=Gray
  -i, --filter-image       Add -dFILTERIMAGE
  -t, --filter-text        Add -dFILTERTEXT
  -v, --filter-vector      Add -dFILTERVECTOR
  -h, --help               Show this help and exit

Examples:
  # screen preset + gray + image filter
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh --preset=screen --gray --filter-image

  # ebook preset, keep colors, text+vector filters
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh -p ebook -i -v

  # default preset + LeaveColorUnchanged
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh

  # "--gray" takes precedent over "-c LeaveColorUnchanged" where both are supplied
  (The following three are equivalent)
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh -c LeaveColorUnchanged --gray
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh -c Gray
  ./pdf_batch_compressor.sh --gray

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📈 Log

Compression Report – Sun Jun 29 10:40:50 AM PDT 2025

Filename           Original(bytes)   Compressed(bytes)   Ratio(%)
MyFile.pdf         167997            24773               14.75

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📄 Tested Environment

hp@HP:~$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2022 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
hp@HP:~$ gs --version
10.02.1

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📊 Sample Compression

PDF File	File Size	Ratio (%)
Original*	218.4 kB	--
Screen preset only	30.2 kB	13.82
Screen preset and gray	24.8 kB	11.36

*This is a one-page PDF containing four equally-sized, full-color portrait images and no text.

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📚 References

• Optimizing PDFs with Ghostscript
• Switches for PDF Files
• The family of PDF and PostScript output devices