Ghostscript

PostScript and PDF interpreter/renderer from Artifex — the reference engine that many other PDF tools build on or shell out to under the hood. Converts PostScript and PDF to raster images, plain text, DOCX, PCL, and XPS; compresses PDFs while preserving visual quality; converts to and validates against the PDF/A archival standard; and adds a searchable OCR text layer to scanned pages. Also handles imposition (N-up page layout), ICC color management, and ZUGFeRD/Factur-X e-invoicing embedding.

AGPL/commercial dual-licensed (also offered as a paid 'Ghostscript Office' edition).

Sample Results

Real output from running this tool against a sample PDF, as part of PDFog's open-source PDF tooling benchmark — pick one to see the commands and full output.