33
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I need to remove some stupid email watermark that expands across all pages of a public domain book. I looked at pdftk man page and some examples but still can not figure out how to remove the watermarks. I appreciate your hints.
hnns
Posted 2012-07-12T12:32:17.550
Reputation: 785
35
very simply task to perform:
use sed:
sed -e "s/watermarktextstring/ /g" <input.pdf >unwatermarked.pdf
but, after, be sure to repair resulting output pdf
pdftk unwatermarked.pdf output fixed.pdf && mv fixed.pdf unwatermarked.pdf
all into one command:
sed -e "s/watermarktextstring/ /g" <input.pdf >unwatermarked.pdf && pdftk unwatermarked.pdf output fixed.pdf && mv fixed.pdf unwatermarked.pdf
text watermarks are nothing else than a text between two tags inside the pdf compressed code
Dingo
Posted 2012-07-12T12:32:17.550
Reputation: 834
50
Just a little add-on to Dingo's answer as it did not work for me:
I had to first uncompress the PDF document in order to be able to find the watermark and replace it with sed.
The first step involves uncompressing the PDF document using pdftk:
pdftk original.pdf output uncompressed.pdf uncompress
now, the uncompressed.pdf can be used as in Dingo's answer:
sed -e "s/watermarktextstring/ /" uncompressed.pdf > unwatermarked.pdf
I then repaired and recompressed the document:
pdftk unwatermarked.pdf output fixed.pdf compress
Philippe
Posted 2012-07-12T12:32:17.550
Reputation: 667
@Alexander Garden It doesn't work, TypeError: str() takes at most 1 argument (2 given) when used following the usage advice given – 8bitjunkie – 2016-02-28T19:40:45.603
@8bitjunkie Can you open a github issue with a full stack trace? – Alexander Garden – 2016-02-29T20:33:59.253
I was having issues with this approach due to pdftk not being able to open the unwatermarked.pdf file. What did the trick was to replace the watermarktextstring via sed using a replacement string which was just N number of space characters where N is the length of the original watermark. In other words, make sure your uncompressed.pdf and unwatermarked.pdf have the same length – gdecaso – 2017-04-11T17:39:35.033
+1 I used the sed command /watermarktextstring/d instead because my water mark string was interlaced with formatting instructions or typographic hints or something like that. – David Foerster – 2017-10-12T16:12:39.947
@Philippe The second command gives an error: "sed: RE error: illegal byte sequence", what should I do? – Karlo – 2018-03-31T17:46:09.007
Since qpdf is the default tool on many distros, here is how to uncompress using qpdf.
– akhan – 2018-11-15T17:39:26.603@Philippe any idea on how to batch remove watermark? – Clain Dsilva – 2018-11-20T12:43:10.437
2Didn't work to remove watermark added by Master PDF Editor. – fccoelho – 2018-12-27T12:10:21.667
You are a life-saver! Thank you!!! :) – johndodo – 2013-11-07T11:11:19.957
1This is really awesome! – qed – 2014-01-29T14:59:44.040
4
I took this process, made it slightly fancier, and wrapped it up in a Python script. It is on github here.
– Alexander Garden – 2014-04-11T04:00:09.533-2
To remove www.it-ebooks.info,
open the PDF in notepad++ or textpad
replace www.it-ebooks.info with nothing (blank)
save the file
Open in standard adobe reader
Exit, you will be prompted to save the file
save it
user549273
Posted 2012-07-12T12:32:17.550
Reputation: 11
1Is this a general solution? What is www.it-ebooks.info? – Karlo – 2018-03-31T17:23:03.627
pdftk crashed when I ran this. – Cerin – 2018-09-03T11:28:54.797
@Dingo how do batch process it? I mean multiple files – Clain Dsilva – 2018-11-20T13:11:48.067
Multiple files having same text string to replace or different strings for each file? – Dingo – 2018-11-20T15:15:34.560
1Fantastic! worked like a charm. please just rename the email address to a fictitious one. I don't want the guy how spoiled the book be targeted by spammers. Specially as he is probably the one who has made the pdf. Many thanks. – hnns – 2012-07-12T14:17:39.053
done! Changed specific string with a generic string – None – 2012-07-12T14:28:35.190
Does anyone know how to modify this solution to get rid of a link watermark? I got rid of the text, but there's still a small square left where the text used to be. – 425nesp – 2013-10-20T07:43:04.080