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Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

scanyourpdf.com

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Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#91

Post by derefr »

baicunko wrote: post #85
miles wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pmiller2 linked[0] to some alternatives[1], including this one[2] which only requires ImageMagick: convert letter.pdf -colorspace gray \( +clone -blur 0x1 \) +swap -compose divide -composite -linear-stretch 5%x0% -rotate 1.5 as-scanned.pdf [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157979 [1] https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/94523/simulate-a-sca... [2] https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/94541/185219

I'd recommend GS after ImageMagick as IM will hugely increase the size of the output due to rasterization!

But isn't rasterization necessary for this deception to work? Unless there's some magical scanner out there that's outputting vector images.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#92

Post by centimeter »

baicunko wrote: post #7
pmiller2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "required"? Like, they wouldn't accept a clean, non-scanned copy? That's absurd.

I usually sign documents on my iPad but in this case they told me the signature had to be from a pen. COVID and everything means I don't have a printer nor a scanner at home so I developed this to "scan my iPad signed documents" worked like a charm!

What do you use to sign PDFs on your iPad?

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#93

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

miles wrote: post #66
pmiller2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a technological toy, I think this sort of thing is cool. In fact, you can do it in LaTeX pretty easily: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/94523/simulate-a-sca... It's interesting that the problem they had was with the signature. You can very easily make a handwritten signature on an iPad. I don't see how there's any practical way to tell the difference between a high-quality, handwritten signature done on an…

> you can do it in LaTeX pretty easily: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/94523/simulate-a-sca... Ironically, despite being hosted on tex.stackexchange.com, all of the answers use ImageMagick, Photoshop, or Windows 10/Adobe Acrobat.

Interestingly, there are LaTeX packages for coffee stains[1] and to simulate the variability of an actual typewriter[2]. I suppose both of these involve discrete objects (the coffee stain, individual characters) and photocopy/scan effects involve 'fuzzing' of the whole image, rather than any particular element, and TeX isn't really set up for the former.

[1] http://hanno-rein.de/archives/349

[2] http://mirrors.concertpass.com/tex-archive/macros/luatex/lat...

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#94

Post by jeffbee »

thesis wrote: post #89

Pretty cool! What I normally do in a pinch is use Google Drive.. it has a "scan" option that you can take a picture with your phone.

FWIW the output can be significantly better using PhotoScan app, also from Google, no idea why they don’t integrate them.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#95

Post by biryani_chicken »

baicunko wrote: post #2

I recently came across a couple of institutions which required me to print, sign and send back a couple of documents. COVID and all of that means I don't have a printer at home. I made this website by inspiration from other posts here and now it's free to use! Code is open source so feel free to comment any new ideas or things you would like includede!

I had the same issue recently. What I did is sign a blank paper, take a pic of it with my phone and copypasted the text over the blank page with The Gimp.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#96

Post by lewiscollard »

bwindsor wrote: post #69
lewiscollard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rate limiting (if by that you mean at the firewall or the web server) is not the way to do it. That shifts the problem somewhere else in the stack, into a place that isn't under version control in the same repository. Consider: If you moved this on to another server, would you remember to enable rate limiting there? If someone else uses your code, will they know to enable rate limiting? Rate limiting isn't a bad idea…

Or use secrets.token_urlsafe https://docs.python.org/3/library/secrets.html#secrets.token...

Hey thanks - somehow, I entirely missed this being a Thing in the stdlib in 3. :) I've used it in my PR on baicunko's repo.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#97

Post by apetresc »

miles wrote: post #90
baicunko wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend GS after ImageMagick as IM will hugely increase the size of the output due to rasterization!

The above convert command produced credible output only 6KB larger than the input PDF in my limited testing.

But that in itself is a tell.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#98

Post by miles »

apetresc wrote: post #97
miles wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above convert command produced credible output only 6KB larger than the input PDF in my limited testing.

But that in itself is a tell.

The whole purpose is to make a new PDF that looks like it was scanned. The file size differing from the original is a feature, not a bug.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#99

Post by jschwartzi »

apetresc wrote: post #97
miles wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The above convert command produced credible output only 6KB larger than the input PDF in my limited testing.

But that in itself is a tell.

Anyone unsophisticated enough to require you to print and handwrite a signature is also unsophisticated enough to not realize that the PDF size is a tell.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#100

Post by jschwartzi »

biryani_chicken wrote: post #95
baicunko wrote: post #2

I recently came across a couple of institutions which required me to print, sign and send back a couple of documents. COVID and all of that means I don't have a printer at home. I made this website by inspiration from other posts here and now it's free to use! Code is open source so feel free to comment any new ideas or things you would like includede!

I had the same issue recently. What I did is sign a blank paper, take a pic of it with my phone and copypasted the text over the blank page with The Gimp.

This is basically what Adobe Reader does with its signature feature.
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