Create transparent background on PDF with PDFtk

[satimis]

Hi all,


OS - Ubuntu 16.04

Where can I find an example to set transparent background with pdftk?

On;

Code: Select all

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...1/pdftk.1.html
If the input PDF does not have a transparent background (such
                 as a PDF created from page scans) then the resulting
                 background won't be visible - use the stamp operation
                 instead.

It mentiones possible. Thanks

Regards
satimis

[bens]

The choice of words in that man page is a bit strange. A PDF does not have a background as such. There's just a page (with no colour), and objects are placed directly on that page. It sounds like what is meant is something that a lot of scanning software does: they add a completely white object as first object covering the complete page, and then add the other objects on top of that. Or sometimes they just create one big image completely covering the page. In such PDFs it would be very hard to automatically remove this "background".

However since you're asking about creating a PDF with PDFtk, I think the answer is simply: you don't need to do anything special. As long as you don't add a "background" to a PDF yourself, it won't have one.

[satimis]

The choice of words in that man page is a bit strange. A PDF does not have a background as such. There's just a page (with no colour), and objects are placed directly on that page. It sounds like what is meant is something that a lot of scanning software does: they add a completely white object as first object covering the complete page, and then add the other objects on top of that. Or sometimes they just create one big image completely covering the page. In such PDFs it would be very hard to automatically remove this "background".

However since you're asking about creating a PDF with PDFtk, I think the answer is simply: you don't need to do anything special. As long as you don't add a "background" to a PDF yourself, it won't have one.

Hi,

Thanks for your detail advice.

On scanning, example: signature, a white background is added. Now I have to running 'convert' (ImageMagick command) to make it transparent.

Regards
satimis