Using Profiles

Provided profiles

pdfToolbox CLI gets shipped with a set of predefined profiles stored in logical groups within <Application folder>/var/Profiles (All Profiles are mentioned here):

Acrobat PDF version compatibility
Profiles for checking the compatibility of a file to a specified Acrobat version

Convert colors
Profiles to perform color conversions
To perform a color conversion using the DeviceLink profiles available as payable option of pdfToolbox, you have to have a valid license for the callas DeviceLink Add-on. The list of provided profiles can be found in section "DeviceLink profiles for Desktop" and "DeviceLink profiles for Server/CLI" on the callas website.
You can use own DeviceLink profiles without the Add-on license of course.

Create PDF layers
Profiles to put specified objects to different layers

Digital printing and online publishing
Profiles to optimize PDF files for digital printing or online publishing

Packaging
Profiles based on the recommendations of the Ghent PDF Workgroup for Packaging

PDF
Profile for checking PDF 2.0 related issues

PDF analysis
Profiles for general analysis of the PDF and its objects (e.g. number of
plates, image resolution etc.)

PDF fixups
Profiles for modifying the contents of a PDF (e.g. downsampling of
images, embedding of fonts etc.)

PDFA compliance
Profiles for verifying compliancy with and converting to PDF/A

PDFE compliance
Profiles for verifying compliancy with and converting to PDF/E

PDFUA compliance
Profiles for verifying compliancy with and converting to PDF/UA

PDFVT compliance
Profiles for verifying compliancy with and converting to PDF/VT

PDFX compliance
Profiles for verifying compliancy with and converting to PDF/X

Prepress
Profiles based on the recommendations of the Ghent PDF Workgroup that are based on PDF/X and specify further requirements for various printing conditions. For more information see: www.gwg.org

Place content
Sample Profiles for placing various content (like text, barcodes or content based on a HTML template) on a page. Please use the Desktop version for configuration of custom Profiles.

Preflight Certificate
Profile to validate the existence and validity of a Preflight Certificate in the PDF document.

ProcessPlans
Processplans as examples how to use the dynamically controlled combination
of Profiles, Fixups, Checks and Actions.

Processing steps
Profiles for checking compliancy with the Processing Steps standard

In order to generate, modify or view pdToolbox profiles you need the Desktop version of pdfToolbox.
pdfToolbox CLI is able to work with all profiles set up with pdfToolbox Plug-In or Standalone. Profiles delivered with pdfToolbox CLI may be edited as well. In order to use a certain profile you will have to export it as a profile package (*.kfpx -file). For further details on setting up a profile see the chapter "callas pdfToolbox Basics" in this manual.

General profile options 

pdfToolbox [-r=r] [-l=l] [-p=p] [-o=o] [-f=f] [-w] [-t] [--hitsperpage=hitsperpage] [--hitsperdoc=hitsperdoc] [--setvariable=setvariable] [--cachefolder=cachefolder] [-s=s] [--incremental] [--analyze] [--noprogress] [--nosummary] [--nohits] [--uncompressimg] [--certify] [--timeout=timeout]
<profile> <input file> [<input file> [...] ]

Disable fixups 

--analyze

Disable execution of fixups defined in the used profile. Only defined
checks are carried out.

Display 

--noprogress

Do not show progress information in Standard output (stdout) during processing.

--nohits

Do not show detailed hit information in Standard output (stdout) during processing.

--nosummary

Do not show summary of hits and fixups in Standard output (stdout) at the end of processing.

Analyze image data 

--uncompressimg

Images get uncompressed during the checking to allow a proper calculation of used colorants. This option may increase the processing time depending on the amount of images contained in the processed PDFs.

Certify 

--certify

Embed a Preflight certificate (also known as "Audit Trail") after processing.

Fast VDP mode 

--fastvdpmode
Click to copy

The "Fast VDP mode" only works for files representing variable data. Is it activated, XObjects are processed only once ignoring context.  Read this article for further information.

Using dynamic profiles

A pdfToolbox profile may contain variable values which can be exchanged during runtime. For more details on setting up those dynamic profiles please see section "Use of kfpx Profiles" in the callas pdfEngine Reference.

--listvariables

Lists all variables defined in a kfpx profile.

--setvariable=<Key>:<Value>

Set variable 'KEY' to 'VALUE' in the provided profile.

--setvariable=<JSON>

Sets all variables contained in the JSON file in the provided profile. JSON file can be exported when processing files in the Desktop version in the variables ask-at-runtime dialog. (pdfToolbox 9.3 and later)

--novariables

Switches off listing of variables.

To export variables used in a Profile to a JSON file (together with more details about the profile), please use Enumerate Profiles.

 

Parameters

Key
 identifier used in dynamic profile
Value
 value to be set for this key
JSON
 path to a JSON file containing variables

If you want to use values containing spaces, you either have to put the string into quotes or escape the space character (e.g. "Spot 300 U" or Spot\ 300\ U).

Example

pdfToolbox --listvariables <profile>
pdfToolbox --setvariable=RESOLUTION:300 

The following characters need to be escaped with \:

’!?*$[]\()|/]

--setvariablepath=<path>

Same as --setvariable but checks for the existence of the referenced file or folder.

If used with --dist (Distributed processing) the referenced file or folder is transferred to the Satellite