lazypdf

Simple PDF manipulation and conversion for Python. Read a PDF, transform it, export to another format. That's it.

No complex pipelines, no bloated abstractions — just a clean, fluent API to merge, split, compress, watermark, convert, and more.

Install

pip install lazypdf

Optional extras:

pip install lazypdf[ocr]       # OCR support (pytesseract + Pillow)
pip install lazypdf[office]    # DOCX/XLSX/PPTX export (python-docx, openpyxl, python-pptx)
pip install lazypdf[tables]    # Table extraction (pdfplumber)
pip install lazypdf[html]      # HTML to PDF via WeasyPrint engine
pip install lazypdf[browser]   # HTML to PDF via Playwright engine (Chromium)
pip install lazypdf[repair]    # PDF repair via pikepdf engine
pip install lazypdf[msoffice]  # MS Office COM automation on Windows (pywin32)
pip install lazypdf[all]       # Everything

Quick Start

import lazypdf as lz

# Read -> Transform -> Export
lz.read("input.pdf").rotate(90).compress().to_pdf("output.pdf")

# Merge multiple PDFs
lz.merge("file1.pdf", "file2.pdf", "file3.pdf").to_pdf("merged.pdf")

# Convert images to PDF
lz.read_images("scan1.jpg", "scan2.jpg").to_pdf("scans.pdf")

# Read Office documents (requires MS Office or LibreOffice)
lz.read_docx("report.docx").add_watermark("DRAFT").to_pdf("draft.pdf")
lz.read_xlsx("data.xlsx").to_png("output/")
lz.read_pptx("slides.pptx").extract_pages([1, 3]).to_pdf("summary.pdf")

# Extract specific pages
lz.read("big.pdf").extract_pages([1, 3, 5]).to_pdf("selected.pdf")

# Add watermark and page numbers
(
    lz.read("report.pdf")
    .add_watermark("CONFIDENTIAL", opacity=0.2)
    .add_page_numbers(position="bottom-center")
    .to_pdf("final.pdf")
)

# Export to images
lz.read("slides.pdf").to_png("output_dir/", dpi=300)

# Extract text
text = lz.read("document.pdf").extract_text()

# Encrypt / decrypt
lz.read("doc.pdf").encrypt("password").to_pdf("protected.pdf")
lz.read("protected.pdf").decrypt("password").to_pdf("unlocked.pdf")

# Redact sensitive text (case-sensitive, exact match)
lz.read("doc.pdf").redact("SECRET-123").to_pdf("redacted.pdf")

# Split into individual pages
lz.read("doc.pdf").split("output_dir/", every=1)

# Chain anything
(
    lz.read("input.pdf")
    .merge("extra.pdf")
    .remove_pages([2, 4])
    .rotate(90, pages=[1])
    .crop(left=50, right=50)
    .add_watermark("DRAFT")
    .compress()
    .to_pdf("result.pdf")
)

API Reference

Entry Points

Chainable Operations

All page parameters are 1-indexed (first page = 1).

Export (Terminal Operations)

Extraction & Info

Limitations

• Office reads (read_docx, read_xlsx, read_pptx, read_csv) require either Microsoft Office (Windows, auto-detected) or LibreOffice (any OS, must be on PATH). No pure-Python solution exists for reliable Office-to-PDF conversion.
• to_docx() extracts text only. Images, tables, and complex formatting are not preserved.
• to_xlsx() only exports tables found in the PDF. Requires [tables] and [office] extras.
• OCR (ocr()) requires Tesseract to be installed on the system in addition to the [ocr] pip extra.
• read_html() defaults to PyMuPDF Story engine (basic CSS). For better rendering, use engine="weasyprint" (requires GTK) or engine="playwright" (requires Chromium).
• Redaction (redact()) is case-sensitive exact text match. Save the result with to_pdf() to persist.
• PDF/A (to_pdfa()) defaults to PyMuPDF engine which may not pass strict validators. Use engine="ghostscript" for full compliance (requires Ghostscript binary).
• Flatten (flatten()) rasterizes pages to images — text becomes non-searchable. Default DPI is 72; use higher values for better quality.
• Image watermark (add_image_watermark()) requires Pillow (included in [ocr] extra).

License

BSD-3-Clause