How to edit PDFs via a CLI

qpdf

• man page
  • § PDF transformation
  • § PDF modification
  • § Page selection
  • § Page ranges
• Installation:
  • Cygwin.
  • Windows If you're not sure which binary to download, read this.
• Basic tasks:
  • Concatenate several PDFs.
• QDF mode
  • Great writeup by the qpdf author (Especially be sure to notice the part where it says that a QDF file "is a completely valid PDF file that is optimized for viewing and editing in a text editor".)
  • How to edit and then re-compress

pdfjam

• man page
• Example of how to resize pages
• Installation:
  • Debian

poppler-utils

• The larger 'poppler' project does something different from the other tools here. If you're only interested in the CLI interface, then focus on the programs known as 'poppler-utils'.
• poppler-utils:
  • man pages   [2]   [3]
  • list of utilities
• Installation:
  • Cygwin
  • Windows
  • Ubuntu

PDFsam

There's a CLI interface called sejda-console-pro. Oh, but important update: The console version is no longer available for free.

pdftk Server

• There are several versions of pdftk. The one with the CLI interface is called "Pdftk Server".
• Note that the tool has been deprecated and removed from many Linux repositories. Because of this, a fork called 'pdftk-java' has had a lot of work put into it.
  • Ubuntu now officially carries pdftk-java.
• Official docs
  • man page
  • Examples
• Windows installer

See also

• A random list of tools