I use pdftk to compress a pdf using the following command line
pdftk file1.pdf output file2.pdf compress
It works as the w
The one-line pdf2ps option (by Lee) actually increased the pdf size. However, the two steps one did better. And it can be combined in a single one using redirection from & to standard input/output and pipes:
pdf2ps large.pdf - | ps2pdf - small.pdf
did reduce a PDF generated by xsane from 18 Mo to 630 ko!
Links are lost, but for the present example, it's not a concern... and was the easiest way to achieve the desired result.