pdfScale.sh

Bash Script to scale PDFs from the command line.
Uses ghostscript to create a scaled version of the pdf input.
The “paper” size does not change, just the elements are resized.

Dependencies

The script uses basename, cat, grep, bc, head and gs (ghostscript).
You probably have everything installed already, except for ghostscript.

apt-get

sudo apt-get install ghostscript bc

yum

sudo yum install ghostscript bc

homebrew MacOS

brew install ghostscript

ImageMagick

As of version 1.2.7 ImageMagick was reintroduced as an optional way to get the first page size.
You will need to install imagemagick and have identify available on your $PATH to then use the -i parameter.

Help info

$ pdfscale -h
pdfscale v1.3.1

Usage: pdfscale [-v] [-s <factor>] [-i] <inFile.pdf> [outfile.pdf]
       pdfscale -h
       pdfscale -V

Parameters:
 -v          Verbose mode, prints extra information
             Use twice for even more information
 -h          Print this help to screen and exits
 -V          Prints version to screen and exits
 -i          Use imagemagick to get page size, 
             instead of postscript method
 -c          Use cat + grep to get page size, 
             instead of postscript method
 -s <factor> Changes the scaling factor, defaults to 0.95
             MUST be a number bigger than zero. 
             Eg. -s 0.8 for 80% of the original size 

Notes:
 - Options must be passed before the file names to be parsed
 - The output filename is optional. If no file name is passed
   the output file will have the same name/destination of the
   input file, with .SCALED.pdf at the end (instead of just .pdf)
 - Having the extension .pdf on the output file name is optional,
   it will be added if not present
 - Should handle file names with spaces without problems
 - The scaling is centered and using a scale bigger than 1 may
   result on cropping parts of the pdf.

Examples:
 pdfscale myPdfFile.pdf
 pdfscale myPdfFile.pdf myScaledPdf
 pdfscale -v -v myPdfFile.pdf
 pdfscale -s 0.85 myPdfFile.pdf myScaledPdf.pdf
 pdfscale -i -s 0.80 -v myPdfFile.pdf
 pdfscale -v -v -s 0.7 myPdfFile.pdf
 pdfscale -h

Example run

$ pdfscale -i -v -s 0.5 ../input.pdf 
pdfscale v1.2.10 - Verbose execution
Checking for ghostscript and bcmath
Checking for imagemagick's identify
  Scale factor: 0.5
    Input file: ../input.pdf
   Output file: ../input.SCALED.pdf
         Width: 595 postscript-points
        Height: 842 postscript-points
 Translation X: 297.500000
 Translation Y: 421.000000

System Install

Please note that the system installer will name the executable as pdfscale with no uppercase chars and without the .sh extension.

If you have make installed you can use it to install to usr/local/bin/pdfscale with:

sudo make install

To remove the installation use:

sudo make uninstall