| name | resize-page |
| description | Rescale a PDF's page size — e.g. US Letter to A4, A4 to Letter, A5 to A4, or any custom dimensions. Use when the user wants to convert a PDF between paper sizes for digital printing. Triggers on phrases like "resize this PDF to A4", "convert to letter size", "change page size". |
Resize PDF Page Size
Rescale every page of a PDF to a different paper size while preserving content proportionally.
Inputs
- Input PDF path (required).
- Target size (required) —
A4, Letter, A5, Legal, A3, or custom WIDTHxHEIGHT in mm or pt.
- Output path (optional) — defaults to
<input>-<size>.pdf next to the input.
- Fit mode (optional) —
scale (default, fit content to new size, preserves aspect ratio) or pad (keep original content size, add margins to reach new size).
Tooling
Prefer ghostscript (gs) — it's pre-installed on most Linux systems and handles content scaling robustly. Fall back to pdfjam (from texlive-extra-utils) for simpler page-size remapping.
Common page sizes (pt)
- A4: 595 x 842
- Letter: 612 x 792
- Legal: 612 x 1008
- A5: 420 x 595
- A3: 842 x 1191
Ghostscript scale-to-fit recipe
gs -o output.pdf \
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-dPDFFitPage \
-dFIXEDMEDIA \
-dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=595 \
-dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=842 \
input.pdf
Adjust DEVICEWIDTHPOINTS / DEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS for the target size.
pdfjam alternative
pdfjam --paper a4paper --outfile output.pdf input.pdf
Workflow
- Verify the input PDF exists and is readable.
- Confirm
gs is installed (command -v gs). If not, install via sudo apt install ghostscript.
- Run the conversion.
- Verify output:
pdfinfo output.pdf | grep "Page size" to confirm the new dimensions.
- Report back the input/output paths and the size change.
Output
Write the resized PDF and report the path. Do not delete the original.
