mutool clean#

The clean command pretty prints and rewrites the syntax of a PDF file. It can be used to repair broken files, expand compressed streams, filter out a range of pages, etc.

mutool clean [options] input.pdf [output.pdf] [pages]

Note

Command line parameters within square brackets [] are optional.

[options]

Options are as follows:

-p password
Use the specified password if the file is encrypted.

-g
Garbage collect unused objects.

-gg
In addition to -g compact xref table.

-ggg
In addition to -gg merge duplicate objects.

-gggg
In addition to -ggg check streams for duplication.

-l
Linearize PDF (no longer supported!).

-D
Save file without encryption.

-E encryption
Save file with new encryption (rc4-40, rc4-128, aes-128, or aes-256).

-O owner_password
Owner password (only if encrypting).

-U user_password
User password (only if encrypting).

-P permission
Permission flags (only if encrypting).

-a
ASCII hex encode binary streams.

-d
Decompress streams.

-z
Deflate uncompressed streams.

-f
Compress font streams.

-i
Compress image streams.

-c
Pretty-print graphics commands in content streams.

-s
Sanitize graphics commands in content streams.

-t
Compact object syntax.

-tt
Use indented object syntax to make PDF objects more readable.

-L
Print comments containing labels showing how each object can be reached from the Root.

-A
Create appearance streams for annotations that are missing appearance streams.

-AA
Recreate appearance streams for all annotations.

-m
Preserve metadata.

-S
Subset fonts if possible. (EXPERIMENTAL!)

-Z
Use object streams cross reference streams for extra compressoin.

--(color|gray|bitonal)-(|lossy-|lossless-)image-subsample-method method
Set the subsampling method (average, or bicubic) for the desired image types, for example color-lossy and bitonal-loessless.

--(color|gray|bitonal)-(|lossy-|lossless-)image-subsample-dpi dpi
Set the resolution at which to subsample.

--(color|gray|bitonal)-(|lossy-|lossless-)image-recompress-method quality
Set the recompression quality to either of never, same, lossless, jpeg, j2k, fax, or jbig2.

--structure=keep|drop
Keep or drop the structure tree.

input.pdf: Input file name. Must be a PDF file.

[output.pdf]: The output file. Must be a PDF file.

Note

If no output file is specified, it will write the cleaned PDF to “out.pdf” in the current directory.

[pages]: Comma separated list of page numbers and ranges (for example: 1,5,10-15,20-N), where the character N denotes the last page. If no pages are specified, then all pages will be included.