How to merge two landscape pdf pages using pyPdf

Question

I'm having trouble merging two PDF files with pyPdf. When I run the following code the the watermark (page1) looks fine, but the page2 has been rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Any ideas what's going on?

Example of what's going wrong

from pyPdf import PdfFileWriter, PdfFileReader

# PDF1: A4 Landscape page created in photoshop using PdfCreator, 
input1 = PdfFileReader(file("base.pdf", "rb"))
page1 = input1.getPage(0)

# PDF2: A4 Landscape page, text only, created using Pisa (www.xhtml2pdf.com)
input2 = PdfFileReader(file("text.pdf", "rb"))
page2 = input2.getPage(0)

# Merge
page1.mergePage(page2)

# Output
output = PdfFileWriter()
output.addPage(page1)
outputStream = file("output.pdf", "wb")
output.write(outputStream)
outputStream.close()

Are you sure they are both landscape? It looks like the left one is portrait. — Björn Pollex, May 18 '11 at 07:32
Yes they are - I just created that image as an example as my actual pdf's contact personally identifiable information. — Humphrey, May 19 '11 at 01:14
I have problem with `pisaContext instance has no attribute 'seek'` — andilabs, Nov 12 '14 at 14:10

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 30 '13 at 17:10

You can transform the page while you're merging it into another page. I defined this function to rotate the page around a point while being merged:

def mergeRotateAroundPointPage(page, page2, rotation, tx, ty):
    translation = [[1, 0, 0],
                   [0, 1, 0],
                   [-tx,-ty,1]]
    rotation = math.radians(rotation)
    rotating = [[math.cos(rotation), math.sin(rotation),0],
                [-math.sin(rotation),math.cos(rotation), 0],
                [0,                  0,                  1]]
    rtranslation = [[1, 0, 0],
                   [0, 1, 0],
                   [tx,ty,1]]
    ctm = utils.matrixMultiply(translation, rotating)
    ctm = utils.matrixMultiply(ctm, rtranslation)

    return page.mergeTransformedPage(page2, [ctm[0][0], ctm[0][1],
                                             ctm[1][0], ctm[1][1],
                                             ctm[2][0], ctm[2][1]])

Then you call it like this:

mergeRotateAroundPointPage(page1, page2, 
                page1.get('/Rotate') or 0, 
                page2.mediaBox.getWidth()/2, page2.mediaBox.getWidth()/2)

UPDATE: I'm happy to say that this code has been merged into the mainline pyPDF2 repository, so no more copy-pasting, just call it! — speedplane, May 15 '14 at 04:59
UPDATE 2: It's name in PyPDF2 is now `mergeRotatedTranslatedPage`. We found the documentation for this in PyPDF unclear but understanding it as "rotate around point" makes sense. — mwakerman, Sep 29 '17 at 04:42

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 19 '11 at 01:19

I found a solution. My code was fine - I just had to change how I generated the original PDF files.

Instead of creating the PDF using PdfCreator & Photoshop, I copy and pasted my photoshop image into MS Word 2007, and then used it's export feature to create the PDF file for page1. It now works great!

So, PdfCreator must producing PDF files that are not compatible with pyPdf.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 30 '13 at 21:58

0

I would like to add that I used Photoshop to save the PDF but as version 1.4 compatible. This made a huge PDF file but it worked.

So it is pyPDF not reading it right.

answered Mar 30 '13 at 21:58

Jeff T

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score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 22 '13 at 23:54

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You can make use of the rotateClockwise or rotataeCounterClockwise function in the page object.

page2 = input2.getPage(0).rotateCounterClockwise(90)

edited Nov 22 '13 at 23:54

BenMorel

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answered May 18 '11 at 07:35

Abdul Kader

5,781
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Yes, I had already tried doing this. However, it doesn't work! The two pages are still 90 degrees different. I'm starting to think that there is either a bug in pyPdf or there is something funky happening in my page1 pdf file. – Humphrey May 19 '11 at 01:08

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 24 '11 at 20:44

0

Since you're using pyPdf, this should do the trick for rotating pages:

output.addPage(input1.getPage(1).rotateClockwise(90))

answered Nov 24 '11 at 20:44

Rauffle

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How to merge two landscape pdf pages using pyPdf

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