Compliance and Optimization

March 14, 2026 ยท View on GitHub

Use these patterns when the required output is archival, accessible, or tuned for delivery performance.

PDF/A archival conversion

curl -X POST https://api.nutrient.io/build \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NUTRIENT_API_KEY" \
  -F document=@document.pdf \
  -F 'instructions={
    "parts": [
      {
        "file": "document"
      }
    ],
    "output": {
      "type": "pdfa",
      "conformance": "pdfa-2a",
      "vectorization": true,
      "rasterization": true
    }
  }' \
  -o result.pdf

Supported PDF/A targets include:

  • pdfa-1a, pdfa-1b
  • pdfa-2a, pdfa-2u, pdfa-2b
  • pdfa-3a, pdfa-3u, pdfa-3b
  • pdfa-4, pdfa-4e, pdfa-4f

PDF/A caveat

To achieve conformance, conversion may vectorize or rasterize content. That can remove live text and font information, so later OCR may be needed.

PDF/UA auto-tagging

Dedicated endpoint:

curl -X POST https://api.nutrient.io/processor/pdfua \
  -H "Content-Type: application/pdf" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NUTRIENT_API_KEY" \
  --data-binary @document.pdf \
  -o result.pdf

Equivalent /build workflow:

curl -X POST https://api.nutrient.io/build \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NUTRIENT_API_KEY" \
  -F document=@document.pdf \
  -F 'instructions={
    "parts": [
      {
        "file": "document"
      }
    ],
    "output": {
      "type": "pdfua"
    }
  }' \
  -o result.pdf

PDF/UA rules

  • PDF/UA is an accessibility target, not just a format conversion.
  • Clean born-digital PDFs generally tag better than rasterized or flattened inputs.
  • Structured HTML sources also tend to produce better accessibility outcomes than image-only content.
  • Validate final outputs with your required checker when accessibility compliance is contractual.

PDF optimization and linearization

Linearize a PDF for fast web viewing:

curl -X POST https://api.nutrient.io/build \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NUTRIENT_API_KEY" \
  -F document=@document.pdf \
  -F 'instructions={
    "parts": [
      {
        "file": "document"
      }
    ],
    "output": {
      "type": "pdf",
      "optimize": {
        "linearize": true
      }
    }
  }' \
  -o result.pdf

Optimization with compression controls:

{
  "parts": [{ "file": "document" }],
  "output": {
    "type": "pdf",
    "optimize": {
      "disableImages": false,
      "mrcCompression": true,
      "imageOptimizationQuality": 2,
      "linearize": true
    }
  }
}

Optimization rules

  • Linearize only for delivery PDFs meant for network viewing.
  • Optimize before signatures when possible. Treat signed PDFs as immutable delivery artifacts.
  • Compression changes should be validated visually when image quality matters.

Official docs