How to use ghostscript to convert PDF to PDF/A or PDF/X?

Question

Is there a way to use ghostscript to convert PDF to PDF/A or PDF/X? I know it can be used to convert PDF to images, but I don't know if it can be used to convert PDF/A. What parameters should I use?

Solution 1

This is to convert a pdf document (not pdf/a) into pdf/a: gs -dPDFA -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dUseCIEColor -sProcessColorModel=DeviceCMYK -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 -sOutputFile=output_filename.pdf input_filename.pdf

Hope this will help some one!

Solution 2

Hope this answer helps others coming from Google with the same problem:

To convert from PDF to PDFA-1b or PDFA-2b, you can use Ghostscript. I suggest you use the latest version (9.19 today).

Install it

In Mac OS, you may prefer to use Homebrew:

brew install ghostscript

In Linux, some distros bring a much older version (rhel7 sports 9.07). To download a fully independent modern one-file-only ghostscript, download it directly from the site:

wget https://github.com/ArtifexSoftware/ghostpdl-downloads/releases/download/gs919/ghostscript-9.19-linux-x86_64.tgz

If the link above is broken when you try it 20 years from now, please refer to ghostscript.com and search for download section. Download the binary version, don't go for the source, unless you know what you are doing.

In Windows, I cannot help you, but if you manage to install it, the following commands will also work, if you substitute the location of files and gs executable.

Command line

gs-919-linux_x86_64 -dPDFA=1 -dNOOUTERSAVE -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o output_file.pdf /path/to/PDFA_def.ps -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 input_file.pdf

In Mac gs-919-linux_x86_64 will be simply gs.

Please note that output_file.pdf and input_file.pdf must be changed to the names of the output file (the converted file) and the input file (the file to be converted). /path/to/PDFA_def.ps is your copy of the file PDFA_def.ps.

-dPDFA=1 is for PDFA-1b.

-dPDFA=2 if you want PDFA-2b.

What is PDFA_def.ps?

PDFA_def.ps is some sort of template ghostscript uses to create a PDFA file. The tricky part is that, for some reason, ghostcript comes with a non-working file.

You'll need to edit PDFA_def.ps and include the path to a valid ICC (color profile) file. Download a good color profile from Adobe:

wget http://tutankhamon.acc.umu.se/mirror/archive/ftp.sunet.se/pub/vendor/adobe/adobe/iccprofiles/win/

Inside that zip, find a file called AdobeRGB1998.icc, put it somewhere and put the path to that file INSIDE you PDFA_def.ps file.

Here is a version of PDFA_def.ps, change PATH_TO_YOUR_ICC_FILE to the path of you AdobeRGB1998.icc.

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/weltonrodrigo/19df77833f023fbe1572168982e4b515/raw/ea86e87379d14120d7ff26f6f235ac7eeb5f5dd5/PDFA_def.ps

Solution 3

@danio, @imgen: Even recently released documentation pages on PDF/X (standardized Prepress requirements) and PDF/A (standardized Archiving requirments) generation were quite misleading. (Your link pointed to a v8.63 release.) In the end, it suggested that running the example commandlines using the sample PDF*_def.ps would already generated valid PDF/A and PDF/X files.

But, they do not!

Here is one of the sample commands, which by itself is correct:

  gs \
    -dPDFA \
    -dBATCH \
    -dNOPAUSE \
    -dNOOUTERSAVE \
    -dUseCIEColor \
    -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
    -sOutputFile=out-a.pdf \
     PDFA_def.ps \
     input.ps

The output file will declare itself to be PDF/A (and most PDF viewers would happily go along with this), but the output file fails all real compliance tests.

The fix is easy: you need to edit your sample PDFA_def.ps (for PDF/X: your PDFX_def.ps) files to match your environments. These required edits were not clearly spelled out in older documentation versions, and the provided command suggested it would work out of the box.

Especially in case of PDF/X you MUST specifiy a valid ICC profile to use.

See also the updated documentation (current SVN trunk version) about this:

• http://svn.ghostscript.com/ghostscript/trunk/gs/doc/Ps2pdf.htm#PDFA

Solution 4

Please note that current answers are not completely correct. You can define which level of PDF/A you want, resulting in different behaviors of the program. This one is correct:

gs -dPDFA -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sColorConversionStrategy=UseDeviceIndependentColor -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=2 -sOutputFile=output_filename.pdf input_filename.pdf

Please note my change from sdPDFACompatibilityPolicy to dPDFACompatibilityPolicy. Change it to a higher number to get other versions. 1 is good if you don't need DOCINFO. Furthermore we use the option UseDeviceIndependentColor to avoid validating issues.

If you change options here, you will most likely get a non compliant PDF/A (even if it stated differently). You can check your pdf/a here: https://www.pdf-online.com/osa/validate.aspx

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Comments

[gabrjan]

That just made my day! Thank u king Arthur!

[doctorate]

Can you please care to answer a similar post? Thanks in advance. stackoverflow.com/q/28632119/1288722

[Kurt Pfeifle]

@doctorate: Sorry, I don't have enough time right now to go into the details over there. Current Ghostscript should be able to generate PDF/X-3 -- though not PDF/X-1. If your print shop cannot accept PDF/X-3 they use very outdated technology. X-3 is much more modern, and more reliable for what it does than is X-1...

[doctorate]

for me it's the last-minute solution to get away with it. They are online printing company, I think PDF/X-3 will solve it, but that only relevant once you have the time to answer. Thanks again.

[Sparkler]

gs outputs that CIE is not recommended; CMYK made some of my pages blue. I simply used gs -dPDFA -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 -sOutputFile=output_filename.pdf input_filename.pdf and it worked.

[Juergen]

Thanks. It's very unpleasant that the default PDFA_def.ps comes with a bug wich leads to a confusing file not found error.

[Shubhra Garg]

How to invoke ghostscript from windows..none of the command mentioned above works. I have tried two options: 1. go to the path of ghostscript ( C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Ghostscript> ) and double click on ghostscript and after that try type the "gs -d..." commands as mentioned above, but it is not working. 2. I have opened the command prompt and tries to invoke ghostscript ( no idea how to invoke it , whether to use gs or type ghostscript etc ) The below is the commands I have tried on ghostscript : C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Ghostscript>

[Ouroborus]

Maybe report this over on Ghostscript's bug tracker.

[Tuure]

The correct way to set the compatibility policy is -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 according to this: stackoverflow.com/questions/57167784/…

[LEo]

First I removed -dUseCIEColor. gs recommends removing it since the release of version 9.11.

[LEo]

I've tried to validate the generated PDF using veraPDF (PDF/A Conformance Checker). The output find 3 validation errors: 1) DeviceRGB may be used only if the file has a PDF/A-1 OutputIntent that uses an RGB colour space. 2) An annotation dictionary shall not contain the C array or the IC array unless the colour space of the DestOutputProfile in the PDF/A-1 OutputIntent dictionary, defined in 6.2.2, is RGB and 3) DeviceCMYK may be used only if the file has a PDF/A-1 OutputIntent that uses a CMYK colour space.

[LEo]

the following error shows up: Error: /invalidfileaccess in --file-- Operand stack: --nostringval-- --nostringval-- (srgb.icc) (r) see full output here: pastebin.com/wpGyGXkU

[Kurt Pfeifle]

@LEo: You didn't specify a valid ICC profile, or the one you specified (srgb.icc) is not in the path where it is meant to be. Look what your PDFA_def.ps defines as the srgb.icc.

[LEo]

@KurtPfeifle I've made a copy of it in the local folder $ cp /usr/share/color/icc/ghostscript/srgb.icc . and it did not work.

[Kurt Pfeifle]

@LEo: better change it to the absolute path in PDFA_def.ps.

[LEo]

@KurtPfeifle Same result.

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Sorry, no time to look more intensely. You'll have to read about the debugging flags you can pass on Ghostscript's command line and use them. Also, install the latest version (9.53.3) and test again. Make sure to read the documentation matching this version: ghostscript.com/doc/9.53.3/VectorDevices.htm#PDFA

[DAme]

In windows: gswin64c.exe -dPDFA=1 -dNOOUTERSAVE -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o output_file.pdf -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 .\inputfile.pdf

[excyberlabber]

This one, with -sColorConversionStrategy=UseDeviceIndependentColor, worked for me. Thanks very much!