fossilesqueElsevier
DiplomjodlerJust print it to a PDF printer.
NeatNitI feel like this will cause quality degradation, like repeatedly re-compressing a jpeg. Relevant xkcd
Why would it cause degradation? You’re not recompressing anything, you’re taking the visible content and writing it to a new PDF file.
You’re pushing it through one system that converts a PDF file into printer instructions, and then through another system that converts printer instructions into a PDF file. Each step probably has to make adjustments with the data it’s pushing through.
Without looking deeply into the systems involved, I have to assume it’s not a lossless process.
Those printer instructions are called Postscript and they’re the basis of PDF.
You are thinking that the printing process will rasterize the PDF and then essentially OCR/vector map it back. It’s (usually) not that complicated.
Unless of course you print everything and then scan it again, like this guy probably does.