Use Automator for manipulating Scanned PDFs

Jun 25, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: zeigerpuppy

If you have a scanner with an automatic document feeder it is convenient to scan double sided pages by scanning the front sides (odds) and then the back sides (evens). I have written an Automator workflow that will take those scanned pages as input, and then output them as a combined and reordered PDF document.

The workflow queries for the source pages, reverses the order of the even pages using PDFtk and then combines and outputs the pages in the correct order.

Requirements: PDFtk is required; however this step could potentially be replaced with a Python script. Unfortunately, building pdftk from either MacPorts or Fink is currently broken so there is a precompiled version here. I only tested it on OS X 10.6.2, so if you use it on other versions, please let me know in the comments if it breaks. I don't believe it will work in 10.5.x.

The Automator workflow can be downloaded from here. And I put up a screenshot of the workflow in Automator. Please feel free to modify, copy, and redistribute the workflow but please share your improvements here.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. The Automator workflow is mirrored here.]

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