A fast command-line tool for PDF manipulation written in Rust.
Compress and merge PDF files naturally and easily with this ready-to-use command line tool. Convert images of any format into ready-to-use pdfs.
- Image recompression — re-encodes images at a target quality, skipping CMYK images
- Structural compression — object stream packing, xref stream compression
- Batch processing — compress multiple files in one command via shell wildcards
- Smart output paths — sensible defaults, explicit naming, or output to a directory
- PDF merging — combine multiple documents into one, with optional compression
- Image conversion — transform any image (.png, .jpg) into a .pdf
- Merge docs and images in a single command, with smart format detection
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/SimonBure/presse/releases/latest/download/presse-installer.sh | shpowershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://github.com/SimonBure/presse/releases/latest/download/presse-installer.ps1 | iex"Download the .msi from the latest release.
cargo install presseMeasured over 19 real-world PDFs, comparing presse press --quality 50 against Ghostscript /ebook.
| presse | ghostscript | |
|---|---|---|
| Mean execution time | 0.135s | 0.927s |
| Mean size reduction | +19.2% | -10.2% |
Presse is ~7× faster and compresses more effectively on this corpus. Ghostscript's /ebook preset can inflate already-optimised documents by downsampling images that are below its target DPI.
# Single file — outputs document_compressed.pdf alongside the original
presse press document.pdf
# Custom output name
presse press document.pdf -o small.pdf
# Output to a directory
presse press document.pdf -o compressed/
# Batch — multiple files into a directory
presse press *.pdf -o compressed/
# Set JPEG quality (0–100, default 80)
presse press document.pdf --quality 60
# Show size comparison after each file
presse press document.pdf --verbose
# Combine everything in a merged.pdf
presse merge *.pdf
# Convert images into pdfs
presse convert img1.png img2.jpg img3.jpeg
# Convert all png images, compressed them and merged them into a single pdf
presse convert *.png -m -q 50
# Merge image and pdf together into a single pdf
presse merge *.png *.pdf| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
-o, --output |
<input>_compressed.pdf |
Output file or directory |
-q, --quality |
80 |
Image recompression quality (0–100) |
-v, --verbose |
false |
Print size comparison after each file |
# Merge two or more files — outputs merged.pdf in the current directory
presse merge a.pdf b.pdf c.pdf
# Custom output name
presse merge a.pdf b.pdf -o result.pdf
# Output to a directory
presse merge a.pdf b.pdf -o output/
# Also compress images while merging
presse merge a.pdf b.pdf --compress| Flag | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
-o, --output |
merged.pdf |
Output file or directory |
-c, --compress |
false |
Compress images in the merged document |
- CMYK images are not compressed (not currently handled by
imagecrate)
- lopdf — PDF parsing and manipulation
- clap — CLI argument parsing
- indicatif — Progress bars
- image — JPEG decoding and encoding
We are happy to welcome contributions! Pull requests are welcome.