• Applescript Quartz .PDF engine (OS) — vs. — Adobe .PDF engine?

[dimitri_cas]

Hello -

A colleague of mine asked me to "develop" a small app that convert in batch
"High Resolution" .PDF (ie. Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities, Create Acrobat Layers from Top-Level Layers, …) to "Low Resolution" (including NO "Compatibility with Illustrator", "layers" visibles, …).

I was first thinking to make an Applescript (since working on Mac) that open Acrobat to re-save the High Res .PDF, etc. But apparently I come against some OS Security restrictions (EVEN I allow "Accessibility permissions to control other apps (like Acrobat)" to my exported Appescript app).

1st question:
Is it that hard to code such a thing with Applescript?

2sd question:
I was thinkung to repalce the Adobe PDF engine by the OS default one "Quartz".
But Will I keep the embed profile ans o on from my original .PDF?

3rd question:

Is there a better option? Knowing ALL my colleague's requests and that I want the "optimized" .PDFs to be saved i the same original folder (ie. NOT on my desk 😉 )

Thank you for any input/feedback
Enjoy your day.
 
 
 

- Dimitri

[creative explorer]

@dimitri_cas I wonder if this GitHub would be better for these type of questions? Especially if you want to focus from custom scripting challenges to leveraging existing open-source tools and community knowledge. For that matter, GitHub has a massive repository for utility tools, including command-line interfaces (CLIs) and native Mac apps designed for tasks like PDF manipulation! 

[dimitri_cas · Accepted solution]

Hello Creative Explorer 🙂
 
 
Thank you for your suggestion.

Finally, after some research,

I've installed “GHOSTSCRIPT” via HomeBrew.
It extends the options of the “Quartz” engine (Mac OS).

And I managed to code what I wanted,
except for hiding the layers (which are in my original .PDF, coming from Ilustrator .PDF exportation (and requested at that step by my colleague)).

Other than that, my (Applescript) app is fast, reliable and efficient even in batch process.
 

 
Thank you

- Dimitri