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Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

scanyourpdf.com

131–140 of 177 posts

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#131
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I'm a long term Windows user but not very proficient. That can't be there entire contents of the bat file, can it? What else goes in there?

Nope that's it. The bat file here is just a clickable shortcut so you don't have to remember the whole command. The interesting stuff is happening in ImageMagick, which has to be installed already.

Ok thanks, that's interesting. I might give it a shot

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Make it a bash script! I have all kinds of scripts for things I don't want to remember in my ~/bin.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#133

I find that digital books are simply too perfect. There should be pdf fonts where there are maybe 10 incantations of each character, and the display: 1. picks one incantation randomly for each display 2. slightly and randomly alters the position/rotation of each character 3. adds a tiny blotch now and then Like the print in a real book, especially ones printed before 1970. I also suggest that the background be an act…

i feel this, and i think i finally understand why people like vinyl static.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#134
post #123
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this one-line ImageMagick command to make COMPACT pseudo-scanned files: convert -density 150 ORIGINAL.pdf -colorspace gray +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 -depth 2 SCANNED.pdf Consider using `-depth 1`, `-depth 3` as a final parameter to map colors to only 2¹=2 or 2³=8 instead of 2²=4 gray levels. Using a small number of gray levels SIGNIFICANTLY reduces file size and also gives your pseudo-scanned document a more pi…

Rather than making a COMPACT version, your command created a file over twice the size of one created using the aforementioned convert letter.pdf -colorspace gray \( +clone -blur 0x1 \) +swap -compose divide -composite -linear-stretch 5%x0% -rotate 1.5 as-scanned.pdf However, that may be a useful feature, since many users end up inadvertently creating very large PDFs when scanning.

If you lower the resolution those auto-scanning services that does OCR on the documents will get problems converting the tex back to normal text. Which might or might not be the point of doing this in the first place... :-)

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#135

I find that digital books are simply too perfect. There should be pdf fonts where there are maybe 10 incantations of each character, and the display: 1. picks one incantation randomly for each display 2. slightly and randomly alters the position/rotation of each character 3. adds a tiny blotch now and then Like the print in a real book, especially ones printed before 1970. I also suggest that the background be an act…

i feel this, and i think i finally understand why people like vinyl static.

Yes. People wrongly argue that vinyl sounds are more accurate. CDs are more accurate. But CDs are perfect, and for us older folks, the sound of vinyl, with its scratches, pops, crackle, rumble, and crosstalk has a comfortable nostalgic appeal.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#136
post #54

Suggestion: Include some before/after examples

This. I had no idea what this did until I read a couple of HN-comments. The short introduction could mean a couple of things:

Just downgrading the pdf? Looking for a signature-like part and turns this to pseduo-handwritten characters, maybe changing the color? Something completely different?

Naturally, I did not want to upload a potentially confidential document to some random webservice.

I actually had a pdf file containing several pages of "Lorem ipsum" that I needed for another thing, but I deleted it yesterday because I was done with it.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#137
post #105

From 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…

Try this one-line ImageMagick command to make COMPACT pseudo-scanned files: convert -density 150 ORIGINAL.pdf -colorspace gray +noise Gaussian -rotate 0.5 -depth 2 SCANNED.pdf Consider using `-depth 1`, `-depth 3` as a final parameter to map colors to only 2¹=2 or 2³=8 instead of 2²=4 gray levels. Using a small number of gray levels SIGNIFICANTLY reduces file size and also gives your pseudo-scanned document a more pi…

I'm taking notes on all comments, I will test what you mentioned to see how the document ends up looking, thanks!

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#138
post #90

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.

When I tested using only IM I was getting 3x file size. I will further test your command to see how this improves the current situation, thanks!!

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#139

From 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…

It should be '-dAutoFilterColorImages=true' instead of 'dAutoFilterColorImages=true' for the gs command.

Re: Show HN: Make Your PDF Look Scanned

#140
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I just use my regular Good Notes 5 app and then export back the PDF
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