Split double-page PDFs, reorder visually, optimize size, & add text layer
Split 2-up PDF into single pages
apt install mupdf-tools/brew install mupdf-toolsmutool poster -x 2 doublepage.pdf singlepage.pdf
Reorder pages via click-and-drag
- Preview: View → Contact Sheet → click and drag pages to reorder → File → Save
Optimize filesize
24-page black and white pamphlet reduced from ~1.9MB to ~639KB:
apt install ghostscript/brew install ghostscriptgs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \ -sColorConversionStrategy=Gray \ -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceGray \ -dBlackIsBlack=true \ -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook \ -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH \ -sOutputFile=grayscale.pdf singlepage.pdf
Perform OCR and embed text layer
Apple's Vision framework via Elucidate produced better results than Tesseract OCR in OCRmyPDF, though there is a new plugin for the latter to leverage Vision: OCRmyPDF AppleOCR. Preview's own use of Vision appears suboptimal:
"I have played around with the OCR on my mac, and have been very impressed. It has been consistently better than tesseract for my purposes. However, when creating a PDF from images using Preview and exporting using ‘Embed Text’ option to OCR, I have noticed the text is worse than if you OCR the exact same images using the shortcut above or using a script. Presumably Preview is using the Vision framework’s less accurate fast path when preparing the PDF.
❧ 2025-10-25