How to Combine and Extract Pages for PDF using Linux

Adobe Acrobat is the king of the jungle when it comes to PDF technology. The main problem that all of the ones that are alternatives for…

Google Gemini AI Generated Photo of PDF Files Being Ripped Apart — Shea Bennett 5/14/24

Adobe Acrobat is the king of the jungle when it comes to PDF technology. The main problem that all of the ones that are alternatives for Linux still charge money to use their software. That can be a real pain when your broke or on a very tight paycheck to paycheck budget or your in a part of the world where you just can’t afford to pay for software.

There is Linux based software that you *can* use, but it is not free:

PDFsam Visual: https://pdfsam.org/download-pdfsam-visual/ (Latest release is 7.0 and they have 5.3.2 as of this writing which should how much they give a crap about Linux and Mac users…

PDF Studio: https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/download/ for a whopping $119+ you can have a version that works on Linux. Sheesh

Master PDF Editor: https://code-industry.net/free-pdf-editor/ (that will be $69 USD please…)

What are you to do if you want to combine files or extract docs? Well, without Linux you are stuck. There is a solution:

Terminal Option (No GUI or UI Interface):

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils pdftk qpdf img2pdf -y

You can quickly convert images to pdf using img2pdf

img2pdf CaptainBurnam-KingtonPhoto.jpg -o CaptainBurnam-KlingtonPhoto.pdf

How to unencrypt and remove that password on a file you ask? Boom…

qpdf --decrypt wiskytangofoxtrot-security.pdf vulcan-intel.pdf

Do you need to extract pages from a file? (this one is a bit wonky…) The numbers represent the number of the page you want to extract and the output is the name of the file you want to rename and export the combined files into.

pdftk Vulcan-BattleStrategy.pdf cat 1 3 4 5-end output Klingon-Intel.pdf

How about combining files? This is the bread and butter of AdobePDF. pdfunite is the command. The 1st two files are the ones you want to combine and the name of the last file name is the output combination file.

cd ~/Downloads/StarTrekHQ
pdfunite USSEnterprise-Layout.pdf USSVoyager-SecIntel.pdf KlingonBattlePlan.pdf

Your welcome…