makebwpdf

Convert a series of image files, or data from a scanner, to a multi-page bilevel (i.e. black and white) PDF with optional OCR. makebwpdf can also fix the incorrect page positioning for A4 and A5 scans produced by the Brother MFC-L2710DW multifunction device.

Requires: econvert, tiffcp, tiff2pdf, ocrmypdf, pdftk, and PIL.

By Pontus Lurcock, 2017-2023 (pont -at- talvi.net). Released under the MIT license (see accompanying file LICENSE for details).

Installation

On Ubuntu 20.04, the requirements can be installed with

sudo apt install python3-pip python3-pil exactimage libtiff-tools ocrmypdf pdftk

The file makebwpdf.py can be run directly. It can also be installed by running python3 -m pip install makebwpdf/ from the parent directory of the repository, which will make the command makebwpdf available on the execution path. python3 -m pip install --user makebwpdf/ will install it for the current user only.

To uninstall, use python3 -m pip uninstall makebwpdf.

Usage

usage: makebwpdf [-h] [--brightness BRIGHTNESS] [--output FILENAME] [--append]
                 [--papersize ISO_NAME] [--tempdir DIRECTORY]
                 [--rotate DEGREES] [--languages ISO_639_2_CODES] [--scan]
                 [--device SANE_DEVICE_NAME] [--correct-position] [--invert]
                 [--export-repositioned FILENAME] [--colour]
                 [input_files [input_files ...]]

positional arguments:
  input_files           input filename

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --brightness BRIGHTNESS, -b BRIGHTNESS
                        Brightness adjustment (default: 0)
  --output FILENAME, -o FILENAME
                        Output filename (required, unless -e supplied)
  --append, -a          Append page(s) to existing PDF output file
  --papersize ISO_NAME, -p ISO_NAME
                        Paper size (A4, A5, or A6)
  --tempdir DIRECTORY, -t DIRECTORY
                        Use DIRECTORY as temporary directory
  --rotate DEGREES, -r DEGREES
                        Rotate pages by the given number of degrees
  --languages ISO_639_2_CODES, -l ISO_639_2_CODES
                        OCR the PDF in these languages (e.g. 'eng+deu')
  --scan, -s            Acquire image from scanner (ignores input files)
  --device SANE_DEVICE_NAME, -d SANE_DEVICE_NAME
                        Scanner device (implies --scan)
  --correct-position, -c
                        Correct positioning of flatbed scans from Brother
                        MFC-L2710DW
  --invert, -i          Invert colours
  --export-repositioned FILENAME, -e FILENAME
                        Don't convert to bilevel or make a PDF. Instead,
                        export first repositioned page to specified file.
  --colour, -C          Make initial scan in colour (useful with -e)