Participating Frequently

Question

Automate one "double page" into two pages?

Forum|Forum|16 years ago
June 2, 2009
4 replies
89282 views

Hi,

I have scanned a few books to PDF. The books fit on the platen of the scanner in such a way that each scan, and thus each page of the PDF, contains two pages of the book. Is there a way to create an automated process that will divide each scanned page into two so that the PDF will now contain correctly-sequenced one-page images of each page in the book?

I'm specifically looking for a batch process or script of some source that will do all of this with a few clicks, as opposed to duplicating the file, cropping the pages and then re-combining...

Thanks very much for your help.

Jon

This topic has been closed for replies.

J

Jon E PAuthor

Participating Frequently

Hi all,

There still seems to be no easy solution to this. I tried some software called A-PDF Page Cut, which works great except for two problems: it breaks all shortcut links in the PDF, and it makes the resulting single pages incapable of being OCR'd. This is unfortunate and indeed makes the PDF quite useless for my purposes.

I spent several hours with the perl script, installed Strawberry Perl on my Windows 7 machine, but it was really beyond me and ate up too much time. I was unable to get it to work.

So, I'm wondering: is there any relatively simple way to cut PDF pages in half down the middle, so that double-page images can be turned into single-page images?

Thanks,

J

S

SaintPablo

Participating Frequently

I'm guessing people can't figure out how my suggestion works or I wrote it down wrong, but it works very well and is easy for me. (Using Windows 7)

Did you try the method I suggested? What problem did you have?

I

i-blis

Participant

I had the same issue. I tried some hacks with Acrobat Pro 8 but was not satisfied with it. I ended up writing a Perl script to achieve batch croping of double pages. In case any one has the same problem...

J

Jon E PAuthor

Participating Frequently

iblis,

Very cool... I don't instantly know what to do with a perl script, and suspect others also dont. Could you suggest how to get started with your script--is there a way to load the script into Acrobat? Perhaps you could post a link to instructions about that?

thanks,

J

S

SaintPablo

Participating Frequently

This method isn't completely automated but I think it's easy and quick.

1. With your original PDF opened use the export > images command to export all your pages to a new directory.

2. Go to that directory and copy all the files and paste in the same directory. Vista will rename the copy to "??? - Copy" but the key is the files will be in order. If you have WinXP you may have to copy the files twice because I think XP will put "Copy" first in the file name.

3. Select all the files, right click on them and select "Combine supported files in Acrobat..". Now you have one PDF with each page duplicated back to back.

4. Use the crop tool to crop the left side of all the odd pages.

5. Use the crop tool again to crop all the even pages.

Now you should have one PDF the way you want it!

B

Bill12

Inspiring

You should be able to do the same thing by extracting all of the pages to separate files and then copying them all. That way you do not have to go the graphic route.

J

Jon E PAuthor

Participating Frequently

@Pablo and @Bill --

I'm really hoping for a fully automated solution to this problem. I have many pdfs of this type, and I can't go through and crop them in half batches and rearrange them. It would take to long. Also, my goodness, we are using advanced technology here--how hard can it be for a program to take care of all of that work for us, right?

There is another discusson of this issue, at http://forums.adobe.com/message/3409598#3409598

According to that site, a javascript can be used to accomplish this task. The script is SplitPages.js.txt (you remove the .txt to use it), and it can be found at http://software.allfaq.org/ES/t/118235.aspx (or do a search for "SplitPages.js.txt" and you will find it in a few places).

So, my question now is: how do you make this javascript work? It seems like you are meant to add it to the Javascripts directory of Acrobat (ie, copy and paste it to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\Javascripts). But then what? I've checked out instructional materials on javascripts and Acrobat (such as http://www.planetpdf.com/developer/learningcenter.asp?ContainerID=1519), but they are quite complicated and don't really give you a step by step applicable to this particular script.

If someone could lay out, in a step by step way, what to do with the script, that would be very useful.

Thanks!

J

Jon E PAuthor

Participating Frequently

Figured this out. Here's a great, free resource for doing it: http://www.pdfsam.org/

Worked great on Acrobat Pro 9 running on Windows 7 RC 1.

R

RadekU

Participating Frequently

Hi Jon,

I have tried the basic pdfsam software but unfortunately I do not see the way it can split one page into two. Would you be able to advise what function you used for that? Thanks.