Scan PDF Cleaner CLI

A high-speed CLI utility and Python library to automatically detect and delete blank pages from scanned PDFs, remove whitespace borders, and clean multi-page document batches.

An online browser-based version is available at TheFreeConverter PDF Tools.

Features

• Blank-Page Detection: Evaluates ink density and page bitmap intensity to accurately remove blank scan backs and separator pages.
• Margin Auto-Cropping: Automatically trims outer scanner borders and non-printable margins.
• Batch Processing: Clean entire folders of digitized contracts, scans, or receipts quickly.
• Local Execution: Runs entirely on your local machine without third-party network requests.

Installation

pip install scan-pdf-cleaner-cli

Or install from source:

git clone https://github.com/The-Free-Converter/scan-pdf-cleaner.git
cd scan-pdf-cleaner
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install -e .

Quickstart & CLI Usage

1. Remove blank pages from a PDF

scan-pdf-cleaner scanned_document.pdf
# Outputs: scanned_document_cleaned.pdf

2. Remove blank pages AND crop margins

scan-pdf-cleaner document.pdf --crop -o ./clean_doc.pdf

3. Adjust blank-page sensitivity threshold

# Higher threshold (e.g. 1.0) considers pages with light scanner noise as blank
scan-pdf-cleaner document.pdf --threshold 1.0

Python API Usage

from scan_pdf_cleaner import remove_blank_pages, crop_pdf_margins

# Remove blank pages
retained, removed = remove_blank_pages("scanned_batch.pdf", "output_cleaned.pdf")
print(f"Kept {retained} pages; discarded {removed} blank pages.")

# Crop margins
crop_pdf_margins("output_cleaned.pdf", "final_cropped.pdf", margin_pt=36.0)

Online Web Tools

Browser-based PDF processing tools:

• Crop PDF Margins Online
• Split, Merge and Edit PDF Pages
• Compress Heavy PDF Files

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.