CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pdfacrobat
Alexey Popkov
Alexey Popkov

Reputation: 9425

Is it possible to uncompress PDF by using Adobe Acrobat or Acrobat Distiller?

Most PDF files found on the Web have compressed and unreadable data streams. Is it possible to uncompress the internal content of a PDF file using Acrobat or Acrobat Distiller, allowing us to read the source code by a text editor?

P.S. This question is inspired by this answer which explains how it can be done with GhostScript.

Upvotes: 23

Views: 22701

Answers (3)

Kurt Pfeifle
Kurt Pfeifle

Reputation: 90193

qpdf and pdftk have already been mentioned. To show the commands:

$ qpdf --qdf --object-streams=disable orig.pdf uncompressed-orig.pdf
$ pdftk orig.pdf output uncompressed-orig.pdf uncompress

mutool however hasn't been mentioned yet:

$ mutool clean -d -a orig.pdf uncompressed-orig.pdf

mutool is a command line tool which ships alongside the lightweight MuPDF PDF + document viewer.

I do not think you can achieve the uncompressing of PDF objects' streams with Acrobat or Distiller (unless you have additional payware plugins available).

Upvotes: 27

johnwhitington
johnwhitington

Reputation: 2753

Use cpdf:

cpdf -decompress in.pdf -o out.pdf

and then the graphic operators for each page can be read in a text editor. You'll need a copy of the standard as a reference, though.

Disclosure: I am the author of cpdf.

Upvotes: 18

Martin Schröder
Martin Schröder

Reputation: 4591

This is easy with qpdf and pdftk.

With Adobe Acrobat you can get at the internal structure after profiling a PDF (preflight with some profile (e.g. detect PDF syntax errors), then Options->Internal PDF structure) - but there's no way to get something editable with a text editor.

Upvotes: 7

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