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PDFJAM(1) User Commands PDFJAM(1)

NAME

pdfjam - A shell script for manipulating PDF files

SYNOPSIS

pdfjam [options] [--] [file[pages]]...

DESCRIPTION

pdfjam assembles a list of documents (pdf, ps, eps, jpg or png) into a single pdf. It allows to rotate, scale, reorder and combine pages freely using the power of the 'pdfpages' and 'graphicx' LaTeX packages.

Output is written to a generated name (unless specified via --outfile). The input files are embedded as graphics in the output. Especially jpg files are kept as is without transcoding. Input from stdin is supported by specifying /dev/stdin as a file and is the default if no file is given.

By specifying pages it is possible to specfiy which pages to include in which order. The default '-' selects all pages. An example:

pdfjam file1 '{},2,4-6,9-' ...

makes an empty page, followed by pages 2,4,5,6 of file1, followed by pages 9 onwards (up to the end of file1).

A page selection can be applied to more than one file, e.g.,

pdfjam file1 file2 file3 last-1 ...

applies page selection 'last-1' (reverting the page order) to all three files; but for example

pdfjam file1 file2 2- file3 1-7 ...

would apply the page selection '2-' to file1 and file2, and '1-7' to file3. A page selection applies to all the files *immediately* preceding it in the argument list.

See the pdfpages manual for more details on pagespec syntax.

OPTIONS TO PDFPAGES AND GRAHPICX

Key value options to 'pdfpages' and 'graphicx' can be specified as --key value.

META OPTIONS

Output this text only; no processing of PDF files.
Output the 'configpath' variable and exit immediately; no processing of PDF files.
Output the version number of pdfjam and exit immediately; no processing of PDF files.
Suppress verbose commentary on progress.

PROCESSING OPTIONS

Run pdfjam sequentially on each input file in turn, and produce a separate output file for each input, rather than the default coalescing behaviour. For the location of output files, see --outfile. The --batch option cannot be used in the case of input from stdin.
Specifies where the output file(s) will go. If 'name' is an existing directory, pdfjam will attempt to write its output PDF file(s) there, with name(s) derived from the input file name(s) and the --suffix option (see below). Otherwise the output pdf will be written at 'name'.
Specifies a suffix for output file names, to be used when --outfile is unspecified or a directory. The STRING must not have zero length.
If the Unix 'file' utility is available, the output of 'file -Lb FILE1' should be 'PDF document...' where '...' gives version information. If this is the case on your system you should use --checkfiles; otherwise use --no-checkfiles, in which case all input files must have the correct extensions (.pdf, .ps, .eps .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or their uppercase variants).
Specify the LaTeX engine to be used (one of pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex). The pathtolatex string must be the full path to a suitable LaTeX executable (for example /usr/bin/xelatex on many unix systems).
Specify whether the temporary directory created by pdfjam should be deleted. Use '--no-tidy' or '--builddir' (see below) to help debug most errors.
Specifies a build directory to be used in place of a temporary one. Existing files inside will be overwritten. Overrides --tidy.
Run latex N times, for each output document made.
Suppress the reading of any pdfjam configuration files.
Specify a command-line encoding

PAPER OPTIONS

Specify a LaTeX paper size, for example '--paper a4' or simply '--a4paper' for ISO A4 paper. A wide range of paper sizes is available thanks to the LaTeX 'geometry' package. For details see documentation for LaTeX and/or the 'geometry' package. If no default value is set, obtain the system’s default paper via libpaper, falling back to A4.
Specify a custom paper size in points = 1/72 inch (known as bp in LaTeX and as pt in other software), e.g. --papersize 612,792. Units may also be specified explicitly, e.g. --papersize 10in,18cm.
Specify landscape page orientation (or not) in the output PDF file.
Specify (or not) the 'twoside' document class option.
Rotate every odd page by 180 degrees (or not). Thus changes along which edge the pages are flipped in duplex printing.
Specify a background colour for the output pages. The RGBSPEC must be a comma-separated triple of integers between 0 and 255. An example: --pagecolor 150,200,150. Default is no background colour.

PDFINFO OPTIONS

Preserve (or not) Title, Author, Subject and Keywords (from the last input PDF file, if more than one) in the output PDF file. This requires the pdfinfo utility, from the poppler-utils package, and the LaTeX 'hyperref' package; if either of those is not available, '--keepinfo' is ignored.
--pdfsubject string, --pdfkeywords string Provide text for the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords in the output PDF file. Requires the LaTeX 'hyperref' package. These options, individually, override --keepinfo.

ADVANCED OPTIONS

Append the supplied STRING to the preamble of the LaTeX source file(s), immediately before the '\begin{document}' line to load LaTeX packages or set global options. An example:
pdfjam --nup 2x2 myfile.pdf -o myfile-4up.pdf --preamble '\usepackage{fancyhdr} \pagestyle{fancy}'

If '--preamble' is used more than once in the call, the supplied preamble strings are concatenated. For a note on avoiding clashes, see the README file, also available at https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam.

--
Signals end of options processing.

PDFPAGES AND GRAPHICX OPTIONS

Specify options to '\includepdfmerge', in the LaTeX 'pdfpages' package. See the the pdfpages documentation (usually 'texdoc pdfpages') for more information. Here KEY is the name of any of the many options for '\includepdfmerge', and VALUE is a corresponding value. Examples:
--nup 2x1 (for 2-up side-by-side imposition)
--scale 0.7 (to scale all input pages to 70% size)
--offset '1cm 0.5cm' (to offset all pages -- note the quotes!)
--frame true (to put a frame round each input page)
--booklet true (to reorder the pages in signatures, generally useful with --nup)
--signature N (specify the signature size, as the number of original pages in a signature in the final document. Caveat: booklet is a short form for signature, so if you use --booklet true, signature will be ignored)
--trim '1cm 2cm 1cm 2cm' --clip true (to trim those amounts from left, bottom, right and top, respectively, of input pages)
--angle NNN (The angle of rotation in degrees. Angles that are not either 0, 90, 180 or 270 will still create straight rectangular pages, only the content will be rotated.)

CONFIGURATION FILES

Defaults for the options --suffix, --keepinfo, --paper, --outfile, --landscape, --twoside, --tidy, --latex, --runs, --checkfiles and --preamble can be set in site-wide or user-specific configuration files. The files searched are

/etc/pdfjam.conf /usr/share/etc/pdfjam.conf /usr/local/share/pdfjam.conf /usr/local/etc/pdfjam.conf $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pdfjam.conf $HOME/.pdfjam.conf

This list can be changed by editing 'configpath' in the pdfjam script. All of these files are ignored if the --vanilla argument is used.

AUTHORS

David Firth (2002 to 2019), Reuben Thomas (2020 to 2024), Markus Kurtz (since 2024)

SEE ALSO

The LaTeX packages graphicx (https://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx) and pdfpages (https://ctan.org/pkg/pdfpages). For including eps files, see the epstopdf package (https://ctan.org/pkg/epstopdf).

For more information, including a sample configuration file, see https://github.com/pdfjam/pdfjam.

2025-01-30 pdfjam 4.1