Seriously, how stupid it is that this can be actually useful.
Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
111–120 of 177 posts
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#112From the github repo, the site is a wrapper around exactly two shell commands. Instead of uploading your data to an untrusted site, you can run from the comfort and safety of your local computer: convert -density 150 input.pdf -colorspace gray -linear-stretch 3.5%x10% -blur 0x0.5 -attenuate 0.25 +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 temp.pdf gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOCACHE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sColorConversionStrategy=Lea…
For other noobish windows users like myself, you can simply dump the following into a bat file. When run, it'll look for a file called "scanThis.pdf" and apply the conversion with ImageMagick.
IF EXIST scanThis.pdf (magick convert -density 100 scanThis.pdf -colorspace gray +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 -depth 2 SCANNED.pdf) ELSE (ECHO File scanThis.pdf not found & PAUSE)Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#113From the github repo, the site is a wrapper around exactly two shell commands. Instead of uploading your data to an untrusted site, you can run from the comfort and safety of your local computer: convert -density 150 input.pdf -colorspace gray -linear-stretch 3.5%x10% -blur 0x0.5 -attenuate 0.25 +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 temp.pdf gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOCACHE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sColorConversionStrategy=Lea…
In summary you could say yes but I wanted to simplify the process for the not-so-techy person. I will work on a Standalone app that simplifies the command and shows a nice GUI for more private documents
I hope you don’t take the comment you’re responding to as anything negative. I’m a software engineer and I would use this myself rather than try and remember some arcane command line utility.
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#114Not saying this site is, but it makes me think of all the (less legit) file conversion websites which are basically portals to harvest your documents (or your aging parents' documents that they don't otherwise know how to convert), and you later find they appear on crappy sites like Scribd. Or worse.
I use these to 'accidentally' upload marketing collateral. Got some clickbacks through unique UTMs so I know it works.
Any chance you could elaborate a bit? This sounds interesting but I'm not in the know enough to read between the lines.
You were trying to see if someone was sniffing the documents uploaded (and confirmed they were).... or you realized you could use them as a vector though which others would post your materials on websites elsewhere (and they did)?
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#115Not saying this site is, but it makes me think of all the (less legit) file conversion websites which are basically portals to harvest your documents (or your aging parents' documents that they don't otherwise know how to convert), and you later find they appear on crappy sites like Scribd. Or worse.
I use these to 'accidentally' upload marketing collateral. Got some clickbacks through unique UTMs so I know it works.
Were these PDFs? I wonder if they were human or automated clicks. Also do you recall which website?
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#116Neat site, but is this really necessary? I switched to digital-only PDFs (edit online & slap in image of signature) a long time ago, without doing any obfuscation to make them look "real", and I've never gotten any pushback from the various government agencies, banks, insurance companies etc that insist on signed & scanned forms.
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#117Really question is in some cases, you still need to sign your signature and then scan the document again, I hope this website can let you add signature automatically...
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#118Neat site, but is this really necessary? I switched to digital-only PDFs (edit online & slap in image of signature) a long time ago, without doing any obfuscation to make them look "real", and I've never gotten any pushback from the various government agencies, banks, insurance companies etc that insist on signed & scanned forms.
I tried to get a refund from MyProtein about 18 months ago because my order never arrived. I filled in the refund pdf and slapped on a previously scanned copy of my signature that’s stored in the MacOS Preview app. They rejected it and said it had to be my real signature. I was really annoyed with them and haven’t shopped there since.
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#119From the github repo, the site is a wrapper around exactly two shell commands. Instead of uploading your data to an untrusted site, you can run from the comfort and safety of your local computer: convert -density 150 input.pdf -colorspace gray -linear-stretch 3.5%x10% -blur 0x0.5 -attenuate 0.25 +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 temp.pdf gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dNOCACHE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sColorConversionStrategy=Lea…
Sounds like a plan to compile it into WASM and run locally inside any browser.
To be honest, I'm waiting for a boom of such services, that can be run in a separate tab without any network jumps.
Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned
#120Funny thing is, some countries require documents to be signed on paper and then scanned. E.g. Japan.