Converting a multi-sheet per page pdf to single sheet per page

Question

My father-in-law usually creates his newsletters pre-'booked' -- that is, two columns with the pages in the right place such that you can print and staple the newsletter. Unfortunately, this month we're using a printer that wants an un-booked PDF -- with one page per page, in the right order. I can re-order pages easily enough, but is there any way to take a PDF which is essentially 2-up and split the pages?

Answer 1

for both raster and vector pdf content you can use this my script I named decutshuffler

usage:

decutshuffler filename.pdf

• http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/8

#!/bin/bash
#a script that takes a 2-up booklet, cut in half the two halves, mix together one by one the pages from odd and even resulting pdf and finally reorder pages in sequential order
filename=$1
w="$(pdfinfo $filename | grep "Page size" | cut -d x -f1 | tr 'Page size:' ' ' | xargs)"
h="$(pdfinfo $filename | grep "Page size" | cut -d x -f2  | tr 'pts' ' ' | xargs)"
halfw="`echo "scale=0; $w / 2" | bc -l`"
pages="`pdftk $filename dump_data output |grep Pages|cut -f2 -d :`"
sed -e "s/$w $h/$halfw $h/g"<$filename>even.pdf
sed -e "s/0 0 $w $h/$w 0 $halfw $h/g"<$filename>odd.pdf
rule="$(for i in `seq 1 $pages`; do echo -n "A$i B$i "; done)"
pdftk A=even.pdf B=odd.pdf cat $rule output interleaved.pdf
doubled="`echo "scale=0; $pages * 2" | bc -l`"
pages4="`echo "scale=0; $doubled / 2" | bc -l`"
deshuf="$(for ((x=$doubled, y=1;x>=$pages4, y<=$pages4;x--, y++)); do echo "$x $y "; done |awk '{ print ; getline ; print $2, $1 }' | tr ' ' '\n' | cat -b | sort -n +1 -2| cut -f1 | tr '\n' ' '| xargs)"
pdftk interleaved.pdf cat $deshuf output deshuffled.pdf
pdftk deshuffled.pdf output fixed.pdf && mv fixed.pdf deshuffled.pdf
echo "file created!"

echo $pages
echo $deshuf
echo "halfw is $halfw"

exit 0

this script

1. takes your pdf imposed as 2-up booklet as input

   • http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/7

2. split the source pdf into its two halves producing a file with odd pages and a file with even pages

   • http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/4 (odd.pdf)
   • http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/3 (even.pdf)

3. mix odd.pdf and even.pdf together into one file, taking, alternately, page 1 from odd, page 1 from even, page 2 from odd, page 2 from even... and so on...

   • http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/5

4. finally, it with a special rule, reorders the file into sequential order, so pages, instead to be (for a 16 pages long booklet)

16 1 2 15 14 3 4 13 12 5 6 11 10 7 8 9

are disposed sequentially in its natural order:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

• http://ge.tt/5IFrNiR/v/6