pdf - Using GhostScript to get page size

Question

Is it possible to get the page size (from e.g. a PDF document page) using GhostScript? I have seen the "bbox" device, but it returns the bounding box (it differs per page), not the TrimBox (or CropBox) of the PDF pages. (See http://www.prepressure.com/pdf/basics/page_boxes for info about page boxes.) Any other possibility?

Answer 1

Unfortunately it doesn't seem quite easy to get the (possibly different) page sizes (or *Boxes for that matter) inside a PDF with the help of Ghostscript.

But since you asked for other possibilities as well: a rather reliable way to determine the media sizes for each page (and even each one of the embedded {Trim,Media,Crop,Bleed}Boxes) is the commandline tool pdfinfo.exe. This utility is part of the XPDF tools from http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html . You can run the tool with the "-box" parameter and tell it with "-f 3" to start at page 3 and with "-l 8" to stop processing at page 8.

Example output:

C:downloads>pdfinfo -box -f 1 -l 3 _IXUS_850IS_ADVCUG_EN.pdf
Creator:        FrameMaker 6.0
Producer:       Acrobat Distiller 5.0.5 (Windows)
CreationDate:   08/17/06 16:43:06
ModDate:        08/22/06 12:20:24
Tagged:         no
Pages:          146
Encrypted:      no
Page    1 size: 419.535 x 297.644 pts
Page    2 size: 297.646 x 419.524 pts
Page    3 size: 297.646 x 419.524 pts
Page    1 MediaBox:     0.00     0.00   595.00   842.00
Page    1 CropBox:     87.25   430.36   506.79   728.00
Page    1 BleedBox:    87.25   430.36   506.79   728.00
Page    1 TrimBox:     87.25   430.36   506.79   728.00
Page    1 ArtBox:      87.25   430.36   506.79   728.00
Page    2 MediaBox:     0.00     0.00   595.00   842.00
Page    2 CropBox:    148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    2 BleedBox:   148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    2 TrimBox:    148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    2 ArtBox:     148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    3 MediaBox:     0.00     0.00   595.00   842.00
Page    3 CropBox:    148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    3 BleedBox:   148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    3 TrimBox:    148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
Page    3 ArtBox:     148.17   210.76   445.81   630.28
File size:      6888764 bytes
Optimized:      yes
PDF version:    1.4