I have something similar. Someone asked for a signed PDF. I digitally signed it and sent it to them. They said it has to be scanned. So I did some image magic fu to it to rotate it and make it look crappy. Then they accepted it.
nashashmi 28 minutes ago [-]
My goto technique: apply signature stamp. Flatten. Change blend mode to multiply. Convert page to image. Rotate image by 0.5 deg. Paste scanned page on tape. Flatten. Change blend mode of image to burn or multiply. Convert to image.
The only tell tale sign is that the text still has this aliasing like texture that doesn’t happen in real scanned pages.
mysterydip 2 hours ago [-]
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.
pooploop64 2 hours ago [-]
I've been in situations where I had to supply a digital version of a signed document but the person asking for it required that it be physically printed off to be signed and then scanned back in. Some policy thing. I think it would technically be fraud to use this but that's one use I thought of.
The description however seems like the creator just likes how scanned documents look. They describe it like how analogue music fans describe vinyl records. I guess everything is nostalgic to someone out there eventually.
ktpsns 2 hours ago [-]
This is in fact useful for people who demand you to print out and sign contracts. Did so many times in the past, using some ghostscript+imagemagick scripting to avoid the cargo culturing.
jhbadger 2 hours ago [-]
For some value of practical, I could see it being useful in making handouts for an RPG where the handout is supposed to be a photocopy of a section of some rare book the players need to scan for clues.
gsinclair 19 minutes ago [-]
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”.
carstenhag 8 minutes ago [-]
iOS will natively let you select the text, as it does ocr on ever image. Maybe Android does the same.
PufPufPuf 45 minutes ago [-]
I was actually required in the past to "print, sign and scan", and due to my lack of a printer I just took a picture of my signature and pasted it in. Nobody ever complained, but if they did, I imagine I'd rather use something like this than go to a copycenter to print a single sheet of paper to satisfy some arbitrary requirement.
laurencerowe 2 hours ago [-]
Sometimes companies demand you print/sign/scan a document.
BrandoElFollito 60 minutes ago [-]
There are countries such as France that request plenty of nonsensical handwriting with some weird also handwritten formulas. This comes from the times where graphology was a big thing in France (you would usually be required to send a handwritten letter of motivation).
Poland is also strong on that, requiring "readable handwritten signatures".
This will end when the dinosaurs that still feel it is important go away.
nutjob2 1 hours ago [-]
Typically when I send a form I will do as much as possible in a PDF editor, including the signature. Most of the world is in denial about how electronic documents, especially scanned ones, work, so you have to play along to stop them from getting upset.
kccqzy 33 minutes ago [-]
I just display the PDF on my monitor and use my phone to take a photo of it. Scanner apps are good at eliminating moire patterns while accentuating the dust on my monitor.
carsonye 1 hours ago [-]
Is there any good tool that does the opposite — turning scanned documents into clean PDFs? I’ve had that need recently.
echoangle 2 hours ago [-]
If you’re interested in another suggestion: maybe allow image output too since that seems to be one of the steps in your pipeline? Maybe for some people using the jpg or a png directly is better than the final pdf.
overflowy 3 hours ago [-]
I made this because the online "make my PDF look scanned" tools want you to upload your file to their servers, which feels sketchy at best. Also, I wasn't happy with the output they produce, I wanted something that looks realistic.
ashton314 2 hours ago [-]
This needs a flag to insert random blank pages
sublinear 50 minutes ago [-]
In the example image, the edge gradient bevels give it away.
There might be extra stuff that can be done to remedy that with this tool, but I'm not sure I'd ever use this anyway.
overflowy 46 minutes ago [-]
Everything can be adjusted, that mostly comes from `--paper-tone` being set too high.
costabrosky 3 hours ago [-]
Useful tool
blopp99 3 hours ago [-]
Niceee
colesantiago 1 hours ago [-]
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.
magick -density 150 input.pdf \ -colorspace Gray \ -virtual-pixel White -background White \ -rotate 0.7 +repage \ -attenuate 0.45 +noise Gaussian \ -blur 0x0.4 \ -brightness-contrast -5x12 \ -compress jpeg -quality 78 scanned.pdf
The only tell tale sign is that the text still has this aliasing like texture that doesn’t happen in real scanned pages.
The description however seems like the creator just likes how scanned documents look. They describe it like how analogue music fans describe vinyl records. I guess everything is nostalgic to someone out there eventually.
I don’t know whether this tool enables that, but the idea is in the neighbourhood of “make it look scanned”.
Poland is also strong on that, requiring "readable handwritten signatures".
This will end when the dinosaurs that still feel it is important go away.
There might be extra stuff that can be done to remedy that with this tool, but I'm not sure I'd ever use this anyway.
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.