Commands to manipulate pdf documents | LinuxGist

• 1. pdftk
  • Basic Usage:
• 2. ghostscript
  • Basic Usage:
• 3. pdfseparate
  • Basic Usage:
• 4. pdftops
  • Basic Usage:
• 5. ps2pdf
  • Basic Usage:
• 6. pdfunite
  • Basic Usage:
• 7. pdftohtml
  • Basic Usage:
• 8. pdfcrop
  • Basic Usage:
• 9. pdfinfo
  • Basic Usage:
• 10. pdftoppm
  • Basic Usage:

Here are several Linux commands that can be used to manipulate PDF documents:

1. pdftk

pdftk is a versatile command-line tool for working with PDFs.

Basic Usage:

• Merge multiple PDFs:

  pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf
  

• Split a PDF into individual pages:

  pdftk input.pdf burst output page_%03d.pdf
  

• Rotate pages:

  pdftk input.pdf cat 1-end right rotate=90 output rotated.pdf
  

• Watermark PDFs:

  pdftk input.pdf background watermark.pdf output watermarked.pdf
  

2. ghostscript

Ghostscript is a powerful tool for manipulating and converting PDF files.

Basic Usage:

• Convert images to PDF:

  gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.jpg
  

• Combine images into a single PDF:

  gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf image1.png image2.png image3.png
  

3. pdfseparate

pdfseparate is part of the Poppler-utils package and can be used to split PDFs.

Basic Usage:

• Split a PDF into individual pages:

  pdfseparate input.pdf output_%02d.pdf
  

4. pdftops

pdftops is also part of the Poppler-utils package and can be used to convert PDFs to PostScript files.

Basic Usage:

• Convert PDF to PS:

  pdftops input.pdf output.ps
  

5. ps2pdf

ps2pdf is part of the Ghostscript package and can be used to convert PostScript files back to PDFs.

Basic Usage:

• Convert PS to PDF:

  ps2pdf input.ps output.pdf
  

6. pdfunite

pdfunite is a command-line tool that concatenates multiple PDFs into one.

Basic Usage:

• Merge multiple PDFs:

  pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf output.pdf
  

7. pdftohtml

pdftohtml can be used to convert PDFs to HTML.

Basic Usage:

• Convert PDF to HTML:

  pdftohtml input.pdf output.html
  

8. pdfcrop

pdfcrop is part of the Tex Live distribution and can be used to crop whitespace from around a PDF.

Basic Usage:

• Crop a PDF:

  pdfcrop input.pdf output.pdf
  

9. pdfinfo

pdfinfo can be used to extract metadata from a PDF file.

Basic Usage:

• Extract metadata:

  pdfinfo input.pdf
  

10. pdftoppm

pdftoppm is part of the Poppler-utils package and can convert PDFs into various image formats (e.g., PNG, JPEG).

Basic Usage:

• Convert PDF to PNG:

  pdftoppm -png input.pdf output_%02d.png
  

These commands provide a variety of ways to manipulate and convert PDF documents using command-line tools in Linux.