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

[enamdar]

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

I have a scanned PDF book with 2 pages on each page. Is there any way I could split the whole doc down the middle so there is 1 book page per page.

 

[berkeman]

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

I have a scanned PDF book with 2 pages on each page. Is there any way I could split the whole doc down the middle so there is 1 book page per page.

Where did you get it from? Is it a legal copy?

 

[Equate]

Maybe this helps...

http://www.pdfsam.org/?page_id=32

 

[berkeman]

Maybe this helps...

http://www.pdfsam.org/?page_id=32

I believe that only splits PDF files at page boundaries, or merges PDF files at page boundaries.

 

[MATLABdude]

In Acrobat (not Reader), there's an option to span print pages. If you expand (to say, 200%) and then make it print such that half of it is on one page, and half is on the adjacent page, you'll have split the PDF right down the middle.

You can then print directly to Acrobat so that it churns out another PDF.

This feature isn't in Acrobat Reader 9, but it might've been in older versions:
http://www.oldversion.com/

You'd also need a PDF printer:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

 

[Melvinjames18]

Acrobat is too expensive I think.
I Googled for you but no freeware returned.
So, use this PDF Splitter, the price is reasonable. It's pretty simple but useful.
http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-splitter.html#163
Hope it helps.
BTW, I'm new here, hello everyone.

 

[MATLABdude]

Acrobat is too expensive I think.
I Googled for you but no freeware returned.
So, use this PDF Splitter, the price is reasonable. It's pretty simple but useful.
http://www.anypdftools.com/pdf-splitter.html#163
Hope it helps.
BTW, I'm new here, hello everyone.

Welcome to PhysicsForums!

Unfortunately, that program only splits off individual pages (or groups of pages), it doesn't split parts of pages, as the OP was asking for. PDFCreator can do the same sorts of things (and it's free):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

 

[Innomen]

"A-PDF Page Cut" will do what you want, the free version water marks the file though, if that matters.

I'm also still looking for a free version. I'll post back here if I find one.

@berkeman

Where did you get it from? Is it a legal copy?

Looking for a way to avoid having to say "I don't know." eh?

Begin Rant:

"Legal" is a matter of opinion, one that varies from district to district, country to country, and person to person. And that's not even beginning to touch on the legal gray areas of pending court cases or the IP law reform movement and fair use debates, or basic ethics and moral imperatives.

Ultimately it's not your business, and its silly to ask because if he has any doubt about your reaction he'll just lie.

You know, Xerox machines in libraries were illegal for a time. I guess we know which side of that debate you'd have been on.

You and Jack Valenti.

I'd be just a little ashamed of being on that side of the line, but hey, that's just me.

 

[jtbell]

If you have an issue with PF's policy on copyright violation, take it up with the owner/admin, Greg Bernhardt. He's the one who's ultimately responsible for the rules here. You can PM him via the "Staff" link at the top of every page.

 

[Innomen]

...or I could just say my piece as an addendum to my response to the original post... oh, right.

Is this not a "Free Speech Zone"?

Anyway...

Update on the split process.

There is an interesting app that may help work around some problems if not outright solve them. It's open source, it's called "Papercrop" not as easy to work with as Page Cut, but it's free.

Again, still looking.

At the moment my approach is splitting the pdf into images (via the export to images function of PDF XChange viewer) and trying to operate on them as a batch, and then using another free tool to recompile them into a pdf, or whatever.

 

[story645]

imagemagick might work if you're always cropping the same regions.

 

[Innomen]

imagemagick is certainly powerful enough, but it's CLI only isn't it? Irfan view will do batch cropping and conversion, but it takes some trial an error to get the numbers right. Thanks :)

 

[berkeman]

@berkeman


Looking for a way to avoid having to say "I don't know." eh?

Begin Rant:

"Legal" is a matter of opinion, one that varies from district to district, country to country, and person to person. And that's not even beginning to touch on the legal gray areas of pending court cases or the IP law reform movement and fair use debates, or basic ethics and moral imperatives.

Ultimately it's not your business, and its silly to ask because if he has any doubt about your reaction he'll just lie.

You know, Xerox machines in libraries were illegal for a time. I guess we know which side of that debate you'd have been on.

You and Jack Valenti.

I'd be just a little ashamed of being on that side of the line, but hey, that's just me.

Then you've made it obvious that you aren't a working engineer or writer or artist or other person who gains a large portion of their income from copyrighted and patented material, otherwise known as intellectual property. I am one of those people, so yes, I take copyrights seriously. And for legal reasons, so does the PF. Copyright violations will not be tolerated here on the PF. And yes, he could try to lie, but there are often ways to figure that out, and there are many deleted posts that have resulted from such attempted violations here.

So far I don't think there's a copyright violation discussion in this thread, well, until your post. Please steer clear of advocating copyright or patent violations here on the PF, or you will not be here for long.

 

[Innomen]

Then you've made it obvious that you aren't a working engineer or writer or artist or other person who gains a large portion of their income from copyrighted and patented material, otherwise known as intellectual property. I am one of those people, so yes, I take copyrights seriously. And for legal reasons, so does the PF. Copyright violations will not be tolerated here on the PF. And yes, he could try to lie, but there are often ways to figure that out, and there are many deleted posts that have resulted from such attempted violations here.

So far I don't think there's a copyright violation discussion in this thread, well, until your post. Please steer clear of advocating copyright or patent violations here on the PF, or you will not be here for long.

And you've made it obvious that you think all intellectual advancement is done for profit. One wonders then why, for example, Ben Franklin donated so many of his patents to the public domain, or why so many of those physicists and engineers you mentioned end up working under government grants with their IP going also into the public domain.

Some people create because they are compelled to do so. It's a mistake to project a solely mercenary attitude onto all humanity.

I see you're also the type that likes to win an argument with a threat instead of reason.

Kick me if you like, and delete this thread if you're that threatened by me.

But for the record.

1. I tried to drop it after having said my piece. And you're the one that needlessly injected the question in the first place. Do you always go around interrogating people with file format questions?

2. I'm not advocating copyright violation, I'm simply saying that what Constitutes violation is up for debate and that debate is massive and at times borders on the philosophic. For example, if I type something from memory is it the same as cut and pasting it from somewhere? Should I be allowed to start patenting random large numbers and then suing for license fees when I find them in software? If not why not? We're allowed to patent genes.


If you want my personal opinion on copyright it's this.

If my (our?) country shared your opinion we'd probably still be primarily horse driven. I mean that literally. George B. Selden isn't exactly a household name but Henry Ford sure is.

The attitude that innovation only occurs when motivated by profit has thoroughly been shown to be a myth as a result of numerous scientific funding debates, started by the kinds of people that say NASA and the NSF are wastes of money. The idea that the free market solves all ignores the existence of common good problems. Innovation, copyright, and patents all relate rather closely to modern common good problems.

Corporations don't spend money to solve problems they spend it to profit from ameliorating their symptoms.

I'm a writer btw, and all my work is available for reading for free to anyone. I'd link you, but I'm betting you'd parlay that into a spamming violation to shut me up. I suspect you'll find some other excuse regardless of my adherence to the rules, perhaps by invoking one of the many ever present subjective clauses? Surely showing your logic to be flawed without regard for allowing you to save face could be constructed as disrespectful and rude?

Further, you clearly don't understand the difference between a copyright and a patent, between credit and profit, we as a nation (and by proxy as a planet, since the US exports and imposes it's IP law everywhere, just ask Australia) have allowed business interests and the greedy to in effect patent brush strokes while outlawing competition and holding innovation for ransom.

This behavior and ideology is in fact literally killing people. Pharmaceutical profiteering via tactical patenting is the clearest example.

Allowing the licensing of software and restricting the flow of facts was and is a colossal mistake. If this (your) attitude had been prevalent from the outset we'd not have libraries at all.

By your logic cave painting was done on commission for tiger meat. What a sad view of human creativity and compassion you must have. Art done for money is Britney Spears, art done for the soul is Bach.

Again, if it were me I'd by just a touch worried that I'm on the same side of the issue as the RIAA, Monsanto, Apple, Dow, Eli Lilly and every other greedy innovation squashing Corporate monster.

Literally thousands of technologies sit gathering dust because some defunct company owns the patent.

But I guess knowledge should only go to those that can afford to buy it eh?

How about you not respond and we focus on the PDF splitting, hmm? Or do I get to play the digital version of Rodney King? I guess we'll see if this is a free speech zone.

 

[story645]

imagemagick is certainly powerful enough, but it's CLI only isn't it?

There's a simplistic gui (at least for the vista version), but you'd want to use the CLI anyway for a batch job.

 

[Innomen]

Can you link to the gui, or give me a Google search term? Or are you saying it's built in? I must admit I was somewhat confused by the program's many download options, it's entirely possible I grabbed the wrong one.

 

[story645]

Can you link to the gui, or give me a Google search term? Or are you saying it's built in?

I was thinking of imdisplay, but I pulled it up and it just handles really basic photo editing.

 

[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]

And yes, he could try to lie, but there are often ways to figure that out.

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]

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.

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

 

[Innomen]

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

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]

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.

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]

"A-PDF Page Cut" will do what you want, the free version water marks the file though, if that matters.

I'm also still looking for a free version. I'll post back here if I find one.

@berkeman


Looking for a way to avoid having to say "I don't know." eh?

Begin Rant:

"Legal" is a matter of opinion, one that varies from district to district, country to country, and person to person. And that's not even beginning to touch on the legal gray areas of pending court cases or the IP law reform movement and fair use debates, or basic ethics and moral imperatives.

Ultimately it's not your business, and its silly to ask because if he has any doubt about your reaction he'll just lie.

You know, Xerox machines in libraries were illegal for a time. I guess we know which side of that debate you'd have been on.

You and Jack Valenti.

I'd be just a little ashamed of being on that side of the line, but hey, that's just me.

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.

http://www.a-pdf.com/faq/how-do-you-divide-a-pdf-page.htm"

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: http://briss.sourceforge.net/" .

 

[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-tools/PDF/PDF-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.

 

[arcik]

My 2-step solution

Thanks to everybody across the years who helped me find my solution. I do the cropping and cutting in PDF Scissors and some final trimming in PDF Rider.

 

[AlephZero]

It's kind of crazy to me that there isn't some open source suite that includes this type of operation.

If you really believe what you preach, just learn enough to create one and put it in the public domain yourself.

Otherwise, maybe what you really mean is "I think everybody else should give me stuff for free, but I'm not giving anything back in return".