presse

A fast command-line tool for PDF compression, written in Rust.

Features

Image recompression — re-encodes images at a target quality, skipping CMYK images
Structural compression — object stream packing, xref stream compression, unused object removal
Batch processing — compress multiple files in one command via shell wildcards
Smart output paths — sensible defaults, explicit naming, or output to a directory

Installation

cargo install presse

Usage

# Single file — outputs document_compressed.pdf alongside the original
presse document.pdf

# Custom output name
presse document.pdf -o small.pdf

# Output to a directory
presse document.pdf -o compressed/

# Batch — multiple files into a directory
presse *.pdf -o compressed/

# Set JPEG quality (0–100, default 80)
presse document.pdf --quality 60

# Suppress output
presse document.pdf --verbose false

Options

Flag	Default	Description
`-o, --output`	`<input>_compressed.pdf`	Output file or directory
`-q, --quality`	`80`	Image recompression quality (0–100)
`-v, --verbose`	`true`	Print size comparison after each file

Limitations

CMYK images are not compressed (not currently handled by image crate)

Dependencies

lopdf — PDF parsing and manipulation
clap — CLI argument parsing
indicatif — Progress bars
image — JPEG decoding and encoding

Contributions

We are happy to welcome contributions! The next step we have in mind is to migrate to subcommands to implement document merging or splitting in a single CLI! Pull requests are welcome.

License

GPL-3.0

presse 0.1.0