I end up using gimp because I always have it installed and raster is easier than relying on the PDF forms to be set up properly.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Privacy
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I am going to hop on this post to ask, if anyone has used a linux tablet for school? I am studying and have some regular classes like Math where I want to use a tablrt instead of paper. Some classmates have iPads and while there is some great software available, I would prefer something FOSS. Pine64 have tablets. Did anybode use them for thungs like pdf markups and math equation drawing? As it is my education and I havent been able to find an equivelantly good software I almost want to cave and by a shitpad so I can stop breaking my back with huge books for wich epubs are available.
I'm using a reMarkable Linux tablet and it's been awesome. There's a bunch of apps ported to it if you're okay with using an older software release, and they give you full root access. Not FOSS or open hardware like Pine64 but really good experience and does not feel too limited.
I know Google has made pixel tablets, and I heard you can get GrapheneOS on at least 1 of them. So there's that.
Firefox. Firefox can draw, sign, highlight, add text in boxes, add pictures. This should be recommended more.
PDF Studio by Qoppa, paid (lifetime subscription) but fantastic, native Linux: https://www.qoppa.com/pdfstudio/
Several options:
- Master PDF Editor, version 4 is free (and in AUR);
- PDF Arranger, good for bulk edits;
- jPdfTweak, a veritable swiss knife of PDF editing;
- jPDFBookmarks, the best for editing bookmarks;
- Briss, for bulk cutting PDFs;
- Krop, also for cutting, but less flexible.
Briss is funny cuz its name and what it does
Overkill for this but just wanted to mention
stirlingtools.com/ (self-hosted PDF magic)
Huh. I used to boot into Windows to use Acrobat because I never found a linux pdf editor that does everything I need, but this looks like it might cover most of my use cases. Nice.
Thanks for the recommendation.
If you are trying to mark something sensitive out, make sure that you are deleting the actual text or convert the PDF to a flat image after. PDFs can store information in text and images, so if you just draw over some text thinking you are marking it out, there is a chance that the mark out is just a image layer sitting on top of the sensitive text. A way to check this is opening the PDF in Firefox after and toggle Reader View (button in the address bar or F9) to see if you can still see to marked out information.
Is there a way to bring it back to a PDF after?
If you're trying to redact documents, convert it to a jpg and use a black cover (not blur) then wipe the metadata. Dont use a pdf at all.
How could I convert the pictures back to a PDF when I'm done?
I think GIMP can do that.
I dont think you should, but if you must use img2pdf
Why not?
Not OP, but I'm guessing PDFs add more metadata that is harder to remove. Just a guess
If you asked this on a windows forum years ago, people would say "you can't edfit a pdf by design"
I like how on Linux we have so many solutions and nobody even mentions this
Would it have been? I mean, I certainly don't like Adobe, but Acrobat has been able to edit pretty much any aspect of a pdf for quite some time.
Libreoffice
I like Okular, but I also use Xournal++.
Inkscape.
Some people mentioned Inkscape and I can't recommend it enough because it's my goto FOSS PDF editor.
It's not made for PDFs and it shows, bit regardless it's absolutely incredible how versatile it is.
You can keep the formatting, it's vector so no loss of percieved quality, and its Text tool is easy (and fast) to use.
The only problem is each page has to be imported and exported seperstely - you'll have to use something else to combine them
As far as signing goes, if it can be a classic squiggle it's perfect - there's a few pen tools and one has smoothing so you can play with it a bit until the signature looks good.
On mobile, so excuse any typos.
Absolutely. And I think a proper "Export to PDF" in Inkscape is something that should be high on the list of "future features" in Inkscape. Editing the PDF in Inkscape is heaven, having to re-join the pages to one big PDF afterwards is (unnecessary) hell.
I can import and export multi-page PDFs into inkskape just fine. No need to do each page individually.
I can only import multipage PDFs in 1.3.2. Export produces a bunch of single-page PDF files. What version do you use?
My version also seems to be 1.3.2. When I select (*.pdf) from the export panel, it lets me select all the pages at once, which results in a single PDF.
I was under the impression that the ability to export a project as a multi-page pdf has been added not long ago, but I might have to check
I've got Inkscape 1.3.2 and so far I have not found to export it as one multipage PDF, only as a batch of numbered single-page PDFs.
Checked again to make sure, it's not very straightforward because it's not part of the Export menu:
You simply have to do File > save a copy and save it as a pdf.
Yeah, you can export multiple-page PDFs and https://floss.social/@doctormo is working on revamping how it's handling colour so we will eventually get propper CMYK support and other cool stuff
If you need something powerful (but maybe not very easy to use at first) GIMP also works great for that.
If you are into selfhosting then there is a great tool for this called StirlingPDF.
Just set this up last night, it's very handy for working with pdf's.
In addition to what's already mentioned in the comments, shout out to Inkscape. I guess it's similar to LibreOffice Draw, but I prefer the user experience of Inkscape. Probably more for single-page PDFs.
Another vouch for Xournal++ here. Never in my life have I been so frustrated with software until I was asked to sign a pdf. I also learned this is the entire reason Docusign was created.
Forget editing any wording yourself either unless you want to spend forever fixing the formatting. The ultimate software as a service is paying to edit a fucking document. When I found Xournal it was like finding gold in the ocean as it was seriously the only decent option on Linux.
Depends what you’re trying to do and what created the pdf. pdftools are good, but they’re command line tools which might not be your scene (dnf/apt/zypper search pdf). Inkscape, Libreoffice are usually a good gui compromise.
Libre office Draw also works for basic editing
But from experience, it won't properly load existing PDFs. At least not the ones it didn't make. At the very least, it tends to strip the font.
I have used Krita to edit 1-2 page PDFs, but it's clunky as each page is its own layer. If you're looking for something that lets you add notes to an entire book or something... probably not useful.
Scribus works, but it's not terribly user friendly. I've looked around for a while for something that is easy to work with, but haven't found anything better. For some forms, I end up needing to fire up my Windows VM and run Adobe.
If you have libreOffice installed I believe you can edit pdfs in Draw.
You can also try Inkscape.
I've used Xournal++ before for adding things like signatures to pdfs
Okular and Xournal++ both do well for annotating an existing PDF, but you can only add not remove or modify.
For modifying, LibreOffice will do it at the expense of the layout getting seriously mangled even on the simplest of PDFs.