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Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

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Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#31

Post by bluebarbet »

digitaltrees wrote: post #25
mysterydip wrote: post #5

I’m all for fun side projects, so don’t take this the wrong way. Does this have a practical use case? Like are people actually wanting to make their PDFs less legible? Usually I’m trying to do the opposite, clean up my scanned-in documents.

Yes. Fraud. It makes a document look like it existed in physical form. Imagine for example a purchase agreement for a house that was physically scanned. You could change the signature to a different name and then make it look like it was original. I am not asserting the authors intent is to facilitate fraud or there isn’t any other practical use, but let’s not be naive and act like fraud isn’t a likely use. Before yo…

It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged.

My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#33

Post by molybd3num »

colesantiago wrote: post #15

Thank you for making this a free tool. There are too many PDF tools that are unnecessarily paywalled, or have a paid tier that don't make any sense. We need more tools from paid ones that should be completely free and OSS.

check out ilovepdf (https://www.ilovepdf.com/) not OSS (?) but it's free

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#35

Post by sowbug »

mysterydip wrote: post #5

I’m all for fun side projects, so don’t take this the wrong way. Does this have a practical use case? Like are people actually wanting to make their PDFs less legible? Usually I’m trying to do the opposite, clean up my scanned-in documents.

Charles Schwab, the brokerage, didn't like that my signed form retitling an account looked too perfect (I had scanned my signature and then inserted the JPEG into their PDF form, which is absolutely 100% legal as a signature). So I printed the form out and sent them a picture of the printout. They didn't like that, either.

So I moved my money out of the account. That worked fine.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#36

Post by normie3000 »

molybd3num wrote: post #33
colesantiago wrote: post #15

Thank you for making this a free tool. There are too many PDF tools that are unnecessarily paywalled, or have a paid tier that don't make any sense. We need more tools from paid ones that should be completely free and OSS.

check out ilovepdf ( https://www.ilovepdf.com/ ) not OSS (?) but it's free

Do you have to upload your documents to their server?

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#37

Post by digitaltrees »

bluebarbet wrote: post #31
digitaltrees wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Fraud. It makes a document look like it existed in physical form. Imagine for example a purchase agreement for a house that was physically scanned. You could change the signature to a different name and then make it look like it was original. I am not asserting the authors intent is to facilitate fraud or there isn’t any other practical use, but let’s not be naive and act like fraud isn’t a likely use. Before yo…

It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.

This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality.

Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements.

And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it look like it belongs by making it look scanned.

Imagine I changed the purchase price on your home to 10% of its value rather than the original agreed price and took it to court to enforce the purchase. This tech would make that appear more credible.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#38

Post by sprobertson »

overflowy wrote: post #29
janoelze wrote: post #28

But… does it look scanned? https://i.imgur.com/ENKZV7s.png

You can play around with the sliders to obtain results that look more dramatic: https://cleanshot.com/share/gpfyJyJV

Much better than your current demo image! The default vignette is too obviously digital

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#39

Post by 1e1a »

carstenhag wrote: post #24
gsinclair wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes want to create PDFs that contain text (Python code) that is not selectable. I want my students to type it in, not copy and paste. I don’t know whether this tool enables that, but the idea is in the neighbourhood of “make it look scanned”.

iOS will natively let you select the text, as it does ocr on ever image. Maybe Android does the same.

MacOS does this as well in Preview.

Re: Show HN: Make PDFs look scanned (CLI or in the browser via WASM)

#40

Post by falsemyrmidon »

digitaltrees wrote: post #37
bluebarbet wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.

This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality. Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements. And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it…

You could just as easily edit it, print it, then scan it again. This tech doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do.

The real problem is that written signatures are a poor form of authentication.

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