Converting a pdf from version 1.4 to 1.5, 1.6, etc.

Sometimes writing a paper can be a real pain in the neck, but the worst is when it is a pain to actually submit a paper. Sometimes conference management systems are really strict. This is for instance the case of EDAS. If you submit a paper using EDAS, maybe you will read this:

The PDF file uses PDF version 1.4, however only 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 is allowed.

it means that you hve to convert your PDF file to a more recent version of PDF. It took me half an hour to find a way to do that, so here is the trick (found on a website I don’t remember).

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.5 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

Moreover, it will frequently reduce the size of your original pdf file…