Ghostscript + PDF: remove transparency, radial and axial shade

Question

I have PDFs that are being uploaded to ISSUU.

These PDFs can be viewed using FLASH but the browser crashes because of issues with the PDF.

ISSUU diagnosed the PDF and detected that the PDF makes use of transparency, radial and axial shades on its pages. They suggest I convert them to bitmaps. Unfortunately they are not experts in Ghostscript.

I need to re-render my PDF using Ghostscript to eliminate transparency, radial and axial shade on images/pages.

1. Can someone help me which is the right command for Ghostscript to render my PDF as simple as possible and make it easily viewed on the web?

2. Perhaps show how to convert to bitmap as ISSUU support advises?

I tried the following but still couldn't solve my problem:

1. Optimize PDF files (with Ghostscript or other)

2. http://zeroset.mnim.org/2015/01/07/flatten-pdfs-with-ghostscript/

Answer 1

Use Ghostscript with the pdfwrite device to produce a new PDF based on the input PDF. Set CompatibilityLevel to 1.3 so that transparency will be 'flattened' (ie rendered to bitmap).

Or use one of the rendering devices to produce a bitmap (eg JPEG).

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An appropriate command could be as simple as this:

gs -o out.pdf               \
   -sDEVICE=pdfwrite        \
   -dCompatibilityLevel=1.3 \
    out.pdf