gs
is likely already installed.pdftk
can be installed usingsudo aptitude install pdftk
.pdftk
is not recommended because of its old and outdated PDF engine.pdfjam
is part of the LaTeX distribution (sudo aptitude install texlive-full
). However,pdfjam
is not recommended either because hyperlinks are not preserved.
So my advice is to go with gs
.
Other commands exist such as pdfseparate
and pdfunite
. They are very good but the output files are quite heavy, compared to those obtained using gs
.
Convert a PDF to multiple PNGs (one image per page)
convert input.pdf -density 300 -background 'white' -alpha remove output.png
Add a password to a PDF file
pdftk input.pdf output output.pdf userpw <password here>
Reduce size/quality of a PDF file
ps2pdf -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook input.pdf output.pdf
/ebook
can also be replaced with /screen
for further reduction.
Extracting pages
# Extracts all pages from 1 to 5
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -dFirstPage=1 -dLastPage=5 -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf
# Extracts all pages from 1 to 2 and 4 to the end
pdftk input.pdf cat 1-2 4-end output output.pdf
# Extract only pages 1, 2, 4 and 5
pdftk input.pdf cat 1 2 4 5 output output.pdf
# Split each page into a file
pdftk input.pdf burst
# OR
file=input.pdf
pages=$(pdfinfo "$file" | grep "Pages" | awk '{print $2}')
echo "Detect $pages in $file";
filename="${file%.*}";
for i in $(seq -w 1 "$pages"); do
pdftk "$file" cat "$i" output "$filename-$i.pdf";
done;
Editing one page
Use Gimp (import with 300-dpi setting).
Merging several PDF files
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -dSAFER -sOutputFile=output.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf input3.pdf
pdftk input1.pdf input2.pdf input3.pdf cat output output.pdf
pdfjam input1.pdf input2.pdf input3.pdf -o output.pdf
Convert one or several JPG files into a single pdf
First, in /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml
, comment out the last 6 lines:
<!-- <policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS2" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS3" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="EPS" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PDF" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="XPS" /> -->
Then:
convert image1.jpg image2.jpg output.pdf
Set the PDF size to A4 (210 x 297 mm)
Make sure your image has a resolution of 1050x1485 pixels. Then:
convert input.jpg -density 50 -units pixelspercentimeter output.pdf
Or, for a 2100x2970 pixel image:
convert input.jpg -density 100 -units pixelspercentimeter output.pdf
If the image is of a different resolution, use this:
i=100; convert input.png -compress jpeg -quality 70 \
-density ${i}x${i} -units pixelspercentimeter \
-resize $((i*21))x$((i*29.7)) \
-repage $((i*21))x$((i*29.7)) output.pdf