luniox

pdf manipulation on linux

About qpdf

QPDF is a powerful command-line program for structural, content-preserving transformations of PDF files. It's a versatile tool that lets you manipulate PDFs in many ways without having to understand the complex PDF file format.

Key features of qpdf:

Jump to section titled: Key features of qpdf:
  1. Merge and split PDFs: Combine multiple PDFs or extract specific pages
  2. Linearization: Optimize PDFs for web viewing (fast web view)
  3. Encryption/decryption: Add or remove password protection
  4. Metadata manipulation: View or modify PDF metadata
  5. Structure inspection: Examine the internal structure of PDFs
  6. Repair damaged PDFs: Fix some types of corrupted PDF files
  7. Convert between PDF versions: Update older PDFs to newer versions

Common usage examples:

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Extract specific pages

Jump to section titled: Extract specific pages 
qpdf --empty --pages input.pdf 5-10 -- output.pdf

Remove specific pages (like pages 1-3)

Jump to section titled: Remove specific pages (like pages 1-3) 
qpdf --pages input.pdf 4-z -- input.pdf output.pdf

Merge multiple PDFs

Jump to section titled: Merge multiple PDFs 
qpdf --empty --pages file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf -- combined.pdf

Password protection

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qpdf --encrypt user-password owner-password 256 -- input.pdf encrypted.pdf

Remove password protection

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qpdf --password=password --decrypt input.pdf output.pdf

Linearize for web viewing

Jump to section titled: Linearize for web viewing 
qpdf --linearize input.pdf output.pdf

QPDF is available for all major operating systems (Linux, macOS, Windows) and is a great alternative to pdftk with a more modern codebase and active development.

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