Some useful PDF editing (and search) commands

• Insert pages with interleave: pdftk A=input_odd_pages.pdf B=input_even_pages.pdf shuffle A B output collated.pdf(from the pdftk package)
• Split an A2-sized PDF into two A3 pages for printing (no overlap): pdfposter -m A3 -p A2 Periodic-Table_A2.pdf Periodic-Table_2xA3.pdf
• Split an arbitrary-sized PDF into A3 pages for printing at 100% size (= 1), no overlap: pdfposter -m A3 -s1 Poster.pdf Poster_split_to_A3.pdf
• Reverse page order: pdftk input.pdf cat end-1 output reversed.pdf(from the pdftk package)
• Reduce PDF filesize: gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf Allowed PDFSETTINGS are /screen, /ebook, /printer, /prepress, /default. (from the ghostscript package)
• Convert a color PDF into grayscale: gs -sOutputFile=output.pdf -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sColorConversionStrategy=Gray -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceGray -dAutoRotatePages=/None -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH input.pdf (from the ghostscript package)
• Export bitmap images: pdfimages -j original.pdf extracted (from the xpdf package)
• Convert into a bitmap image: convert original.pdf converted.png (from the imagemagick package)
• Split into individual 1-page PDF files: pdftk original.pdf burst (from the pdftk package)
• Merge two or more PDF files: pdftk original1.pdf original2.pdf cat output merged.pdf (from the pdftk package)
• Delete page 13 from a PDF file: pdftk original.pdf cat 1-12 14-end output page13deleted.pdf (from the pdftk package>
• Rotate page 5 of the PDF file 90 degrees counterclockwise: pdftk Figures_LRES.pdf cat 1-4 5L 6-end output Figures_LRES2.pdf (from the pdftk package>
• Assemble a new PDF where each 4 pages from the source files are merged into one landscape page: pdfjam *.pdf –landscape –nup 2x2 For portrait orientation use the “–no-landscape” option (from the pdfjam package).
• Underlay a PDF with another (background) PDF: pdftk foreground.pdf background background.pdf output overlay.pdf (from the pdftk package).
• GUI PDF editors: I tried out PDFEdit  , but it is too difficult for me. The Master PDF Editor"  is not free, but it seems to be much more usable without extensive initialization of the user.
• **Encrypt a PDF with both a owner password (to change the file) and a user password (to open the file): **pdftk input.pdf output encrypted.pdf owner_pw PROMPT user_pw PROMPT (from the pdftk package).
• **If you need to do a text search through many PDF files in the current directory and all of its subdirectories, you can use pdfgrep  : **pdfgrep -r searchterm * (from the pdfgrep package).
• **Convert & merge all jpg files in the current directory into one PDF file:**convert *.jpg pictures.pdfIn the recent Ubuntu editions, this batch operation is not allowed due to security risks and you can disable this policy by renaming the configuration file:/etc/ImageMagick-6$ sudo mv policy.xml policy.xmlout