PDF Toolkit

PDFtk is a simple yet effective tool for PDF.

encrypt document

pdftk <input>.pdf output <encrypted>.pdf encrypt_128bit owner_pw <owner-password> user_pw <user-password>

decrypt encrypted document

pdftk <encrypted>.pdf input_pw <password> output <decrypted>.pdf

combine multiple documents

pdftk <one>.pdf <two>.pdf cat output <output>.pdf

insert blank page

let's say if we have 1.pdf with 3 pages, 2.pdf with 5 pages and we need to combine into a new file with a sequence of all the pages in 1.pdf, a blank page and then the last two pages of 2.pdf,

$ pdftk F=1.pdf S=2.pdf B=blank.pdf cat F1-end B S4-5 output result.pdf
$ # or
$ pdftk F=1.pdf S=2.pdf B=blank.pdf cat F B S4-5 output result.pdf

Note: To create blank.pdf, use ghostscript or imagemagick as shown below,

1. Use ps2pdf from ghostscript

$ touch blank.ps
$ ps2pdf blank.ps blank.pdf

2. Use imagemagick

$ magick xc:none -page Letter blank.pdf

See also

• PDFtk Examples
• Paper Sizes - ghostscript
• Paper Sizes - imagemagick