Is there any free way to split PDF pages down the middle?

Innomen

Ahh, I'll have to check it out. Thanks anyway.

It's kind of crazy to me that there isn't some open source suite that includes this type of operation. PDF is a hyper common file format and books being shaped as their are, plus the nature of flat bed scanners, coupled with Project Gutenberg and similar efforts, make the fact that there isn't an all in one project somewhere kind of shocking.

cslave1

Sorry to dredge up the past--I'm sincerely looking for a way to split the pages in pdfs of scanned journals/books--all academic stuff covered by fair use rules. I want to be able to read these pdfs on my kindle without having to zoom in.

berkeman

I'll have to go back and re-read the thread, but did nothing suggested so far work for you?

Innomen

You answered before you read what you were answering? *facepalm*

Anyway...

I eventually gave up on the problem.

The work around I used was to print the file and physically cut the document and then rescan it. Fortunately OCR and printing technology makes that possible though it was a dreadful waste of paper.

If you find something please do post here what is found, I'd like to have the option even if my need is no longer pressing.

berkeman

I sometimes do things out of order, yes.

Interesting solution. I wonder if there is a way to use a flat panel monitor on top of the scanner, instead of having to print out the paper version.... The focal plane is the plane of the scanner glass, though, so that may not work.

cslave1

Thanks guys,

Here's my new theory:

1) first print to file using cutepdf or something similar; when you go to print, print two copies and select collate--or is it deselect collate?--whichever way makes it so that you duplicate pages throughout the document.

2) next, do a batch 180 degrees rotation of every other page, so that, for instance, page one of the scanned document will be on the left side of page one of the file and page two of the scanned document will be on the left side of the second page of the file. In other words, you will have a complete and correct sequence of the scanned pages on both the left and right sides of the pdf (in lanscape view), because you've duplicated and alternately rotated each two-page image.

3) Now you should be able to crop and discard one half of every page (because the half you're discarding should be the first half of the next page).

4) Once you've done the batch cropping, you'll need to re-rotate every other page so that all pages are oriented the same.

The end result should be a single file with all of the scanned pages, each on a single pdf page.

What do y'all think? I'll test it out and let you know what happens.

quirmche

My vote goes to this program. It is excellent, fast, and free! Of course the water mark, on the first page only, is actually a link to the products webpage. No biggie. If you don't like the watermark pay for full version.

Linky

That gets you a readable pdf for your eReader! Two thumbs up!

If you have Acrobat just delete the first page and Wah La, no more watermark! Sweet!!!

dvchench

Wow, thank you guys for posting this. Just to let everyone know, A-PDF works like a charm under Wine on Linux Mint 9. This is the kind of program I would be happy buying (if i did this type of stuff very often or for work).

P.S. I sometimes torrent e-copies of books which I legally own as paper versions. Can't wait until the IP lawyers start trying to chew on that. lol.

quirmche

Update, a little work flow advice!!

In Acrobat, if you have it, export a copy of the first page of your original PDF document that you are interested in splitting and save to desktop. Then import that page back into your document using Acrobat. Effectively, you now have two first pages. Next process with A-PDF. After you process your document through A-PDF re-open PDF in Acrobat and you can now delete that watermarked page that A-PDF created and then your document is clean!!!

P.S. You will need to have Adobe Acrobat to accomplish this!

kynikos

I know this thread is a bit old, but since it turns up first in my search results for the same problem, I thought I might share another solution. I've been using the free program Briss to split the scanned pdfs and automatically rearrange them in proper order. Here's a link for anyone with the same problem: Briss.

alexxx

old thread, but for the sake of future googlers with the same problem, if you have pdftk, imagemagick and perl, here's an anwser (modify density and chop arguments as you like):

explode the pages:
> pdftk book.pdf burst

right pages
> perl -we 'foreach(@ARGV){$f=$_;/pg_(\d\d\d\d)/;$n=2*$1+1;print"cr_$n.pdf\n";`convert -density 300 $f -gravity West -chop 1500x0 cr_$n.pdf`}' pg*.pdf

left pages:
> perl -we 'foreach(@ARGV){$f=$_;/pg_(\d\d\d\d)/;$n=2*$1;print"cr_$n.pdf\n";`convert -density 300 $f -gravity West -chop 1500x0+1500+0 cr_$n.pdf`}' pg*.pdf

recover the book:
> pdftk *.pdf cat output newbook.pdf


alessandro

alexxx

since pdftk is not smart enough to deal with input files order, replace the last step with:

> FILES=`perl -we 'foreach $i (1..439) {print"cr_$i.pdf "}' | xargs`; pdftk $FILES cat output newbook.pdf

rutherfordpau

You can do it like this.

I used Acrobat Pro 9.

Suppose you have a .pdf file = doc.pdf

Copy and paste it (to the same folder that doc.pdf is in) = copy of doc.pdf

From Acrobat, split
copy of doc.pdf
into single pages = copy of doc.pdf part 1, .... part 2, .... part n.

Select all those single pages and copy them again =
copy of copy of doc.pdf part 1, .... part 2, part n.

Using Acrobat's "combine" feature merge all the single page files into a single file.

Move one set of files up (or down) (I found that doing this in blocks of 5-at-a-time and then fine tuning the positions worked best) such that
copy of doc.pdf part n
and
copy of copy of doc.pdf part n
appear *successively* in the list

i.e. you now have n pairs of
copy of doc.pdf part n
copy of copy of doc.pdf part n

You now have a pdf consisting of n duplicate double pages.

Now use Acrobat's "crop" tool to crop e.g.
the left hand side of odd numbered pages and
the right hand side of even numbered pages.

You have now "split" the original double paged .pdf into a single paged .pdf (with 2n pages as the n page original)

Voila!

r4z0r84

Understanding that this is an old thread, but as i do for all that have PDF issues with changing their scanned books or images or downloaded ebooks in pdf format.

I use the following programs, i have written a full guide to using them including pictures in docx format, i am unable to upload here so i'll just be pasting plain text.

PDF Scissors (PDF cropping program)
http://www.pdfscissors.com/
Click start PDF scissors, Java 6 window will pop up automatically downloading the application.
Click open select what PDF file you wish to crop or edit, by default the program will stack all pages together, if you wish to edit each page individually( good for minor changes) or every second page(useful for book scans to remove middle spine of book line)
Click OK, Wait for the program to do its thing.
You will now see all the pages stacked on top of each other if selected “all pages together”
Click and drag around the part of the document you wish to keep, if you are unable to select the entire portion you want, click and drag the dot points at the corners of the selection box.
When happy with your selection click save
The program has now successfully cropped your PDF
There are multiple other ways to use this tool, To sort PDF’s by showing pages individually and selecting the order one by one, Skip pages to delete them, Select multiple places on a single page to split them into multiple pages, Of course this tool is still best suited for cropping as it will take quite a long time to do all of the above, I suggest using the other programs below to do the above.

PDF Arrange (sort pages or move unwanted pages to the end so PDF Split can remove multiple)
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Office-...-Arrange.shtml
Click Download, Either US or UK mirror. Click Save
Go to download location (default C:\Users\Your Username \Downloads)
Right click and extract then run PDFArrange.exe
Click Open, Select the PDF you wish to modify.
The page numbers will show in the left pane of the program, click and drag pages into the right order
You will have a preview in the right pane of the program these may not be accurate if you have used other modifying programs such as PDF rotate, The final result will not change the orientation from the original the previews are just a guide.
When happy with the order click save.
 
Online Free Tools
Rotate PDF
http://www.rotatepdf.net/ (10mb limit)
http://www.rotatepdf.eu/index.html
Click Browse
Select the PDF you wish to rotate.
Select the rotation.
Click Rotate.

PDF Merge
http://www.pdfmerge.com/
Click Browse
Select the multiple PDF files to merge into one PDF
Click Merge
Click Save

PDF Split (can also merge)
http://www.splitpdf.com/
Click Browse
Select the PDF file you wish to modify
Enter page numbers from 1-10 for pages 1-10 in a single PDF (if there are 20 pages it will remove the last 10)
To select more than one section, Click +More
More than likely you will want to tick the “Merge the selected pages into a single file” this option will give you a single PDF with all the selected pages
If you want single pages tick the “Extract all pages into separate files” this option will extract all pages individually to give multiple outputs.