Converting PDF files to PDF-A

2022-12-17

In order to deposit publications in the NSF Public Acccess Repository, they need to be PDF-A compliant. You can either convert existing PDF files to PDF-A, or use LaTeX to directly create PDF-A files. Here’s how.

Converting PDF files to PDF-A

Install GhostScript. It’s available on Linux/Mac/Windows, but I’ve only ever used Linux so … 🙄.

gs -dPDFA=1 -dNOOUTERSAVE -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB \
    -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o output.pdf -dPDFACompatibilityPolicy=1 input.pdf

There’s some discussion on what color model to use, and other options here. Specifically, the PDFA_def.ps file that comes with GhostScript is supposed to be broken, and you may need to edit it. However, it WorkedForMe™, and the PDF-A file produced was accepted by the NSF PAR.

Creating LaTeX files which are PDF-A compliant.

If you have the LaTeX source, then just use the pdfx package.

\usepackage[a-1b]{pdfx}

📮 Leave a comment (Spammers beware: All comments are moderated)