My Favorite FOSS Tools: pdfjam

pdfjam is a command line utility which provides tooling to manipulate PDF files.

This article is part of the series "My favorite FOSS tools."

TL;DR

  1. Installation
  • Arch Linux:

  • Ubuntu (tested on 25.04):

    • install texlive-extra-utils: sudo apt install texlive-extra-utils
  1. Usage
  • pdfjam --nup 2x2 -i infile.pdf -o outfile.pdf - generates a new pdf with a 2x2 grid of the pages of the input pdf per page

Most useful options

OptionExampleEffectExtra
--landscape/ --no-landscape--landscapelandscape/portrait format
--nup axb with a and b being integers--nup 2x3multiple (input)pages per (output)page
--paper spec--paper a4paper or --a4papercontrol scaling/sizingcommon formats: a0paper, a1paper, a2paper, a3paper, a4paper, a5paper, a6paper,b0paper, b1paper, b2paper, b3paper, b4paper, b5paper, b6paper,c0paper, c1paper, c2paper, c3paper, c4paper, c5paper, c6paper,b0j, b1j, b2j, b3j, b4j, b5j, b6j,ansiapaper, ansibpaper, ansicpaper, ansidpaper, ansiepaper,letterpaper, executivepaper, legalpaper (source)

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