CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpdfpdflatex
hao_maike
hao_maike

Reputation: 3039

How to stitch several PDF pages into one big canvas-like PDF?

I have a 32-page PDF of my family tree. Instead of having the family tree all on one really big PDF page (which is what I want), it is formatted so a group of 8 individual US letter-sized pages are supposed to be stitched across the width; 4 rows of this completes the tree. The margins of each page are all 22px.

If you visualize it in table form (where the numbers represent PDF page numbers):

table

I've tried to whip up some Python code to do this, but haven't gotten very far. How can I stitch the PDF so it can be one big page instead of smaller individual pages?

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: Here's the code I wrote. Sorry for not originally posting it.

from pyPdf import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader

STITCHWIDTH = 8;
currentpage = 1;

output = PdfFileWriter()
input1 = PdfFileReader(file("familytree.pdf", "rb"))

for(i=0; i<=4; i++)
    output.addPage(input1.getPage(currentpage))
    currentpage++;
    #do something to add other pages to width

print "finished with stitching"

outputStream = file("familytree-stitched.pdf", "wb")
output.write(outputStream)
outputStream.close()

Upvotes: 10

Views: 3001

Answers (3)

Jukka Matilainen
Jukka Matilainen

Reputation: 10198

As an alternative to Ben Jackson's suggestion of first converting to PostScript, and doing an "N-up" transform on the PostScript files, there's also a script called pdfjam, that can operate directly on PDF files.

Example:

pdfjam --nup 8x4 --landscape --outfile output.pdf input.pdf

The script is a wrapper for the pdfpages LaTeX package, recommended in another answer.

Upvotes: 8

Kurt Pfeifle
Kurt Pfeifle

Reputation: 90295

If you have a LaTeX installation around, I would recommend to use

  1. the pdfpages package,
  2. a little 10-line LaTeX script/document,
  3. and the pdflatex command.

The LaTeX script

Save the following LaTeX script as 8x4-letter.tex. Adapt the /path/to/input.pdf accordingly:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{color}
  \definecolor{mygray}{rgb}{.9,.9,.9} % background color for complete poster
  \pagecolor{mygray}                  % line must *precede* \usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}          % comment out for testing
\usepackage[paperwidth=4896ppt, paperheight=3168]{geometry}
                                      % dimensions of 8 letter widths, 4 heights

\pagestyle{plain}                     % do not use page numbering
\begin{document}                      % orig. slide sizes are 612x792 pts (Letter)
  \includepdf[nup=8x4,                % 8x4 grid was asked for
              delta=0 0,              % horiz.+vert. distance between slides
              scale=0.999,            % scale down for additional margins
              pages={1-32},           % input document has 32 pages
              noautoscale=false,      % set to true if you have larger pages
              frame=false]            % set to true if you want frames
              {/path/to/input.pdf}    % filename+path cannot have spaces!
\end{document}

The pdflatex command

Now run

pdflatex 8x4-letter.tex

This should produce a PDF file, 8x4-letter.pdf.

If you want frames around each page, use frame=true. To add additional spacing between pages, use delta=10 10 or delta=17 11 or whatever suits you. You may want to change the value for scale=... too.

Upvotes: 0

Ben Jackson
Ben Jackson

Reputation: 93890

Use pdf2ps (part of Ghostscript) to convert the PDF to PostScript. This is usually a lossless transformation. Then use the techniques of http://www.tailrecursive.org/postscript/nup.html or any other "N-up" PostScript preamble to reorganize your pages.

The sample link combines a perl script to modify the PostScript to insert some snippets, but you can find more sophisticated examples which override showpage so that you can just insert your preamble with the redefined showpage at the start of your document.

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions