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Dayalan Saravanan

Edit a multipage PDF document

Editing with flpsed:

flpsed works well for entering plain text and tags within a PDF document. flpsed is rather basic, it does not allow adding images (for example: an image of your signature), but it is very convenient for filling out a PDF document with simple text input.


    $ sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends flpsed 

    $ flpsed document.pdf  # to edit document.pdf

Editing with gimp and pdftk:

gimp supports importing PDF documents and do anything with the PDF that you can do to a traditional image in gimp.

$ sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends gimp pdftk

If your version of gimp does not support exporting as .pdf you can use the convert application which is contained in the imagemagick package.

Open the PDF document to edit in gimp.
note: If your PDF contains multiple pages, gimp will notify you and allow you to open each page as layer or an image. I use a image as I want each page as its own image.

Alter the PDF page(s) as needed and export as .pdf
note: If gimp did not allow exporting to .pdf format, save it as a .png and use convert (located in the imagemagick package) to convert from a .png to .pdf

$ convert document.png document.pdf

Use pdftk to concat the separated pdfs back into one PDF document.

$ pdftk document1.pdf document2.pdf document3.pdf cat output document.pdf

where document1.pdf, document2.pdf and document3.pdf are the individual .pdf files and document.pdf is the single pdf document that contains all of the individual pdf files.

flpsed allows quick and easy editing while gimp/pdftk provide a robust suite for nearly all pdf editing needs. Both approaches provide an alternative to printing documents, signing them and faxing/emailing back.