pdf-inspect

A command-line tool for inspecting PDF files. Built with Rust.

Features

• Metadata — Title, author, creator, creation/modification dates (human-readable)
• Page info — Page count and first page dimensions (in cm)
• Color modes — Detects RGB, CMYK, Grayscale, ICC profiles, spot colors
• Embedded fonts — Lists all fonts with type and embedding status
• Print profile — Shows output intents (standard, condition, registry)
• PDF/X-4 compliance — Validates against ISO 15930-7 requirements

Installation

Quick install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/necessarylion/pdf-inspect/main/install.sh | bash

Download pre-built binary

Go to the Releases page and download the archive for your platform:

Platform	File
Linux (x86_64)	pdf-inspect-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
Linux (ARM64)	pdf-inspect-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
macOS (Intel)	pdf-inspect-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
macOS (Apple Silicon)	pdf-inspect-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
Windows (x86_64)	pdf-inspect-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip

Then extract and move the binary to your PATH:

# macOS / Linux
tar xzf pdf-inspect-*.tar.gz
sudo mv pdf-inspect /usr/local/bin/

Build from source

git clone <repo-url>
cd pdf-inspect
cargo build --release

The binary will be at target/release/pdf-inspect.

Usage

Basic inspection

pdf-inspect document.pdf

Output:

Metadata
  Title: My Document
  Author: John Doe
  CreationDate: 13 March 2026 03:49:34 PM UTC+07:00
  Producer: Adobe PDF Library 17.0
  Trapped: False

Pages
  Count: 12
  Size: 21.00 x 29.70 cm

Color Modes
  - CMYK

Embedded Fonts
  - Arial-BoldMT (TrueType) [embedded]
  - TimesNewRomanPSMT (Type1) [embedded]

Print Profile
  Standard: GTS_PDFX
  Output condition: FOGRA39
  Description: Offset commercial and specialty printing
  Registry: http://www.color.org

JSON output

pdf-inspect document.pdf --json
pdf-inspect document.pdf --check-pdfx4 --json

PDF/X-4 compliance check

pdf-inspect document.pdf --check-pdfx4

Validates 12 requirements:

Check	Requirement
PDF Version	Must be 1.6 or higher
No Encryption	Encryption is prohibited
Output Intent	GTS_PDFX must be present
Fonts Embedded	All fonts must be embedded
TrimBox/ArtBox	Must be present on all pages
Color Consistency	No mixing of CMYK and RGB
Trapped Key	Must be set to True or False
Title	Must be present and non-empty
Creator	Must be present and non-empty
CreationDate	Must be set
ModDate	Must be set
GTS_PDFXVersion	Must contain "PDF/X-4"

Development

# Run during development
cargo run -- document.pdf
cargo run -- document.pdf --json
cargo run -- document.pdf --check-pdfx4 --json

# Build release binary
cargo build --release

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs                        # Composition root
├── domain/
│   ├── model.rs                   # Value objects (PdfReport, ColorMode, Font, etc.)
│   └── repository.rs              # PdfRepository trait
├── infrastructure/
│   └── lopdf_reader.rs            # PDF parsing with lopdf
├── application/
│   └── inspect.rs                 # Use case + PDF/X-4 validation
└── presentation/
    ├── cli.rs                     # CLI argument parsing (clap)
    └── formatter.rs               # Colored terminal output

Dependencies

• lopdf — PDF parsing
• clap — CLI argument parsing
• serde / serde_json — JSON serialization

License

MIT