ingram-check

A command-line tool that checks PDF files for Ingram Lightning Source compliance and auto-fixes common issues.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• Ghostscript (gs) — optional; use --use-ghostscript to prefer it over the native Python backend

Installation

Homebrew (macOS & Linux)

brew tap saggingmeniscus/tap
brew install ingram-check

Installs a self-contained binary — no separate Python required. Supports macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux (x86_64 and arm64), including WSL.

PyPI

pip install ingram-checker
# or
uv tool install ingram-checker

Standalone binary

Download the tarball for your platform from the latest release — ingram-check-macos-arm64, ingram-check-macos-x86_64, ingram-check-linux-x86_64, or ingram-check-linux-arm64 — extract it, and run ./ingram-check/ingram-check. No Python installation required.

From source

git clone https://github.com/saggingmeniscus/ingram-check.git
cd ingram-check
uv tool install .

After installation, the ingram-check command is available globally.

Usage

Interior PDFs

# Basic check — auto-detects page size
ingram-check interior book.pdf

# Specify trim size and color type
ingram-check interior book.pdf -t 6x9 -c bw

# With bleed
ingram-check interior book.pdf -t 6x9 --bleed

# Auto-fix (ICC removal, color conversion, crop stripping, downsampling, etc.)
ingram-check interior book.pdf --fix

# Unsafe fixes (includes upsampling low-res images)
ingram-check interior book.pdf --fix-unsafe

# JSON output
ingram-check interior book.pdf --format json

If --trim-size is omitted, the tool detects the page size from the PDF and reports it. An error is shown only if pages have inconsistent dimensions.

Trim sizes can be specified as dimensions (6x9, 5.5x8.5) or aliases (trade, a5, letter, digest, royal, mass market).

Cover PDFs

ingram-check cover cover.pdf -t 6x9
ingram-check cover cover.pdf -t 6x9 -b casewrap --fix

Listing checks

ingram-check interior --list-checks
ingram-check cover --list-checks

Individual checks can be toggled with -e (enable) and -d (disable):

ingram-check interior book.pdf -e bracketed_text -d margins

Checks

Interior (15 checks)

*Downsampling high-res images is a safe fix (--fix). Upsampling low-res images requires --fix-unsafe.

Cover (9 checks)

Font embedding, page count, cover size, ICC profiles, spot colors, color space, ink density, resolution, and barcode (manual verification).

Auto-fix

--fix applies safe, lossless corrections:

• Pad odd page count with a blank page
• Remove ICC profiles from page resources and image XObjects
• Convert spot colors to CMYK
• Convert RGB to Grayscale or CMYK
• Strip crop/registration marks by setting CropBox = TrimBox
• Downsample images above 375ppi to 300ppi

--fix-unsafe additionally applies fixes that may degrade quality:

• Upsample images below 300ppi (adds pixels via bicubic interpolation, but no real detail)

Fixed PDFs are written to <filename>_fixed.pdf in the same directory.

By default, all fixes use native Python (pikepdf + Pillow). Pass --use-ghostscript to use Ghostscript's pdfwrite device instead.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.