How to add page numbers to Postscript/PDF

Asked 21/10, 2009 at 20:10 Answered 14/3 at 17:12

If you've got a large document (500 pages+) in Postscript and want to add page numbers, does anyone know how to do this?

Rechaba answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:10 Comment(2)

Override the showpage operator as shown in this answer to an essentially duplicate question – Lipid 27/9, 2013 at 9:46

See Alan Munn's very nice solution on TeX SE. – Ivie 4/3, 2016 at 18:52

This might be a solution:

convert postscript to pdf using ps2pdf
create a LaTeX file and insert the pages using the pdfpages package (\includepdf)
use pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}} or something from the fancyhdr package in the arguments of \includepdf
if postscript output is required, convert the pdflatex output back to postscript via pdf2ps

Hardej answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:43 Comment(3)

I think this is a great idea, but it I haven't got it working. The page numbers don't insert over the \includepdf pages. – Rechaba 21/10, 2009 at 20:58

Have you used something like \includepdf[pages=-,pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{document.pdf}? – Hardej 21/10, 2009 at 21:2

This is essentially what Alan Munn does in his solution, minus the PS stuff. – Ivie 4/3, 2016 at 19:4

Based on rcs's proposed solution, I did the following:

Converted the document to example.pdf and ran pdflatex addpages, where addpages.tex reads:

\documentclass[8pt]{article}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\topmargin 70pt
\oddsidemargin 70pt

\pagestyle{fancy}
\rfoot{\Large\thepage}
\cfoot{}
\renewcommand {\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand {\footrulewidth}{0pt}

\begin{document}
\includepdfset{pagecommand=\thispagestyle{fancy}}
\includepdf[fitpaper=true,scale=0.98,pages=-]{example.pdf}
% fitpaper & scale aren't always necessary - depends on the paper being submitted.
\end{document}

or alternatively, for two-sided pages (i.e. with the page number consistently on the outside):

\documentclass[8pt]{book}
\usepackage[final]{pdfpages}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}

\topmargin 70pt
\oddsidemargin 150pt
\evensidemargin -40pt

\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead{} 
\fancyfoot{} 
\fancyfoot[LE,RO]{\Large\thepage}

\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}

\begin{document}
\includepdfset{pages=-,pagecommand=\thispagestyle{fancy}}
\includepdf{target.pdf}
\end{document}

Easy way to change header margins:

% set margins for headers, won't shrink included pdfs
% you can remove the topmargin/oddsidemargin/evensidemargin lines
\usepackage[margin=1in,includehead,includefoot]{geometry}

Rechaba answered 22/10, 2009 at 15:30 Comment(1)

It looks good. It seems that it removes internal bookmarks from example.pdf, though. – Kalpak 24/6, 2021 at 19:6

you can simply use

pspdftool

http://sourceforge.net/projects/pspdftool

in this way:

pspdftool 'number(x=-1pt,y=-1pt,start=1,size=10)' input.pdf output.pdf

see these two examples (unnumbered and numbered pdf with pspdftool)

unnumbered pdf

http://ge.tt/7ctUFfj2

numbered pdf

http://ge.tt/7ctUFfj2

with this as the first command-line argument:

number(start=1, size=40, x=297.5 pt, y=10 pt)

Weapon answered 27/1, 2012 at 14:37 Comment(7)

Speaking of broken links, those example .pdf hyperlinks are broken. – Moira 11/1, 2017 at 7:35

sorry, I'll strive to replace as soon as possible – Weapon 11/1, 2017 at 13:28

As of april/2017, ifile.it links are dead. – Flux 12/4, 2017 at 3:40

sorry for dead links, I'll strive to replace as soon as possible – Weapon 12/4, 2017 at 11:16

links updated and working now; thanks for alerting me ;-) – Weapon 12/4, 2017 at 18:36

Is pspdftool available on macOS? – Icterus 11/6, 2021 at 12:28

@Icterus It’s said to be compatible with BSD systems and is a simple C project with very few dependencies, so you should have no problem compiling in on macOS. See the INSTALL file. Maybe you’ll have to install a few packages with e.g. MacPorts, such as zlib, gmake or autotools. – Condescension 6/6, 2023 at 0:47

I used to add page numbers to my pdf using latex like in the accepted answer.

Now I found an easier way: Use enscript to create empty pages with a header containing the page number, and then use pdftk with the multistamp option to put the header on your file.

This bash script expects the pdf file as it's only parameter:

#!/bin/bash
input="$1"
output="${1%.pdf}-header.pdf"
pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2)
enscript -L1 --header='||Page $% of $=' --output - < <(for i in $(seq "$pagenum"); do echo; done) | ps2pdf - | pdftk "$input" multistamp - output $output

Pine answered 27/1, 2012 at 12:13 Comment(7)

warning for other users: only since build 1.43 pdftk has multistamp feature - regarding to code I can suggest output="${1%03d.pdf}-header.pdf" to have zero equalization – Weapon 31/1, 2012 at 21:43

Multistamp is great. Enscript however is not very flexible for this use case - I tried to get the line numbers centered in the footer, with the font I want etc... What I ended up doing is creating 1000 pages with my word processor, with auto line numbers in the footer. Then I just multistamp it on my files. – Pym 7/10, 2012 at 14:16

It doesn't work for me. Bucle does not iterate, I've tried hardcoding $pagenum value, but nothing. – Charlenacharlene 11/11, 2014 at 17:11

For me dump_data give a line for each page and seq gives an error. With an additional "tail -n1" it worked for me: pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2 | tail -n1) – Mcabee 23/12, 2016 at 17:48

Could you please explain this a bit for beginners like me. – Korea 19/8, 2020 at 12:45

brew install pdftk-java for macOS. – Icterus 11/6, 2021 at 12:27

How do we move the position of the headers? – Icterus 11/6, 2021 at 12:27

I was looking for a postscript-only solution, using ghostscript. I needed this to merge multiple PDFs and put a counter on every page. Only solution I found was an old gs-devel posting, which I heavily simplified:

%!PS
% add page numbers document bottom right (20 units spacing , harcoded below)
% Note: Page dimensions are expressed in units of the default user space (72nds of an inch).
% inspired by https://www.ghostscript.com/pipermail/gs-devel/2005-May/006956.html

globaldict /MyPageCount 1 put % initialize page counter

% executed at the end of each page. Before calling the procedure, the interpreter
% pushes two integers on the operand stack:
% 1. a count of previous showpage executions for this device
% 2. a reason code indicating the circumstances under which this call is being made:
%    0: During showpage or (LanguageLevel 3) copypage
%    1: During copypage (LanguageLevel 2 only)
%    2: At device deactivation
% The procedure must return a boolean value specifying whether to transmit the page image to the
% physical output device.
<< /EndPage {
  exch pop % remove showpage counter (unused)
  0 eq dup { % only run and return true for showpage
    /Helvetica 12 selectfont % select font and size for following operations
    MyPageCount =string cvs % get page counter as string
    dup % need it twice (width determination and actual show)
    stringwidth pop % get width of page counter string ...
    currentpagedevice /PageSize get 0 get % get width from PageSize on stack
    exch sub 20 sub % pagewidth - stringwidth - some extra space
    20 moveto % move to calculated x and y=20 (0/0 is the bottom left corner)
    show % finally show the page counter
    globaldict /MyPageCount MyPageCount 1 add put % increment page counter
  } if
} bind >> setpagedevice

If you save this to a file called pagecount.ps you can use it on command line like this:

gs \
  -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE \
  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
  -sOutputFile=/path/to/merged.pdf \
  -f pagecount.ps -f input1.pdf -f input2.pdf

Note that pagecount.ps must be given first (technically, right before the the input file which the page counting should start with).

If you don't want to use an extra .ps file, you can also use a minimized form like this:

gs \
  -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE \
  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
  -sOutputFile=/path/to/merged.pdf \
  -c 'globaldict /MyPageCount 1 put << /EndPage {exch pop 0 eq dup {/Helvetica 12 selectfont MyPageCount =string cvs dup stringwidth pop currentpagedevice /PageSize get 0 get exch sub 20 sub 20 moveto show globaldict /MyPageCount MyPageCount 1 add put } if } bind >> setpagedevice' \
  -f input1.pdf -f input2.pdf

Depending on your input, you may have to use gsave/grestore at the beginning/end of the if block.

Tanbark answered 23/7, 2019 at 10:35 Comment(9)

This is excellent, thank you. I hacked on it for a bit, thinking that it would be possible to get rid of /MyPageCount and simply use the page number the interpreter puts on the stack, but that doesn't work for at least some PDFs; with those, the "device deactivation" seems to be called after each page, and then showpage is called with a never-incrementing page count. – Mantua 12/5, 2020 at 14:37

@Mantua yes, I also wondered why the "count of previous showpage executions for this device" always stayed at 1 (IIRC), but never came around the reason and it did not matter enough for further investigation. There are SO answers that seem to use it successfully. – Tanbark 12/5, 2020 at 21:56

If in addition you wish to display the total page number:

gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress -o "$output" -c "globaldict /MyPageCount 1 put /concatstrings { exch dup length 2 index length add string dup dup 4 2 roll copy length 4 -1 roll putinterval } bind def << /EndPage {exch pop 0 eq dup {/Helvetica 12 selectfont MyPageCount =string cvs ( / $npages) concatstrings dup stringwidth pop currentpagedevice /PageSize get 0 get exch sub 20 sub 20 moveto show globaldict /MyPageCount MyPageCount 1 add put } if } bind >> setpagedevice" -f input1.pdf

– Fizzy 15/2, 2021 at 14:24

... where npages is defined as: npages="$(qpdf --show-npages input1.pdf)" – Fizzy 15/2, 2021 at 14:25

Nice. It works fine, and the resulting pdf still has internal links. I think that the last command requires a `` before the last line. – Kalpak 24/6, 2021 at 19:8

@EricDuminil I guess you mean that there's backslash \ missing, right? Thanks, fixed that. – Tanbark 8/7, 2021 at 12:34

@Jakob: Exactly. I forgot to escape the escape character. :D Thanks. – Kalpak 8/7, 2021 at 12:37

If the stuff of your PDF is motley and bare page numbers look 'interflowing' into background, you can try this solution: i.sstatic.net/Y2GwO.gif stackoverflow.com/questions/71937645 – Diatomaceous 25/4, 2022 at 19:45

The script without using the .ps file was very useful to dynamically set the page start number. Thank you. – Scarf 16/6, 2022 at 2:45

This might be a solution:

convert postscript to pdf using ps2pdf
create a LaTeX file and insert the pages using the pdfpages package (\includepdf)
use pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}} or something from the fancyhdr package in the arguments of \includepdf
if postscript output is required, convert the pdflatex output back to postscript via pdf2ps

Hardej answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:43 Comment(3)

I think this is a great idea, but it I haven't got it working. The page numbers don't insert over the \includepdf pages. – Rechaba 21/10, 2009 at 20:58

Have you used something like \includepdf[pages=-,pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{document.pdf}? – Hardej 21/10, 2009 at 21:2

This is essentially what Alan Munn does in his solution, minus the PS stuff. – Ivie 4/3, 2016 at 19:4

I liked the idea of using pspdftool (man page) but what I was after was page x out of y format and the font style to match the rest of the page.

To find out about the font names used in the document:

$ strings input.pdf | grep Font

To get the number of pages:

$ pdfinfo input.pdf | grep "Pages:" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d" " -f2

Glue it together with a few pspdftool commands:

$ in=input.pdf; \
out=output.pdf; \
indent=30; \
pageNumberIndent=49; \
pageCountIndent=56; \
font=LiberationSerif-Italic; \
fontSize=9; \
bottomMargin=40; \
pageCount=`pdfinfo $in | grep "Pages:" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d" " -f2`; \
pspdftool "number(x=$pageNumberIndent pt, y=$bottomMargin pt, start=1, size=$fontSize, font=\"$font\")" $in tmp.pdf; \
pspdftool "text(x=$indent pt, y=$bottomMargin pt, size=$fontSize, font=\"$font\", text=\"page \")" tmp.pdf tmp.pdf; \
pspdftool "text(x=$pageCountIndent pt, y=$bottomMargin pt, size=$fontSize, font=\"$font\", text=\"out of $pageCount\")" tmp.pdf $out; \
rm tmp.pdf;

Here is the result:

Biggin answered 26/1, 2016 at 16:5 Comment(1)

pspdftools allows you to pass in a string to format the page number, so you can do this in one shot:

pspdftool "number(x=$pageNumberIndent pt, y=$bottomMargin pt, start=1, size=$fontSize, font=\"$font\", text=\"page %d out of $pageCount\")" $in $out

– Vickers 7/12, 2020 at 22:3

Further to captaincomic's solution, I've extended it to support the starting of page numbering at any page.

Requires enscript, pdftk 1.43 or greater and pdfjam (for pdfjoin utility)

#!/bin/bash
input="$1"
count=$2
blank=$((count - 1))
output="${1%.pdf}-header.pdf"
pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2)
(for i in $(seq "$blank"); do echo; done) | enscript -L1 -B --output - | ps2pdf - > /tmp/pa$$.pdf
(for i in $(seq "$pagenum"); do echo; done) | enscript -a ${count}- -L1 -F Helvetica@10 --header='||Page $% of $=' --output - | ps2pdf - > /tmp/pb$$.pdf
pdfjoin --paper letter --outfile /tmp/join$$.pdf /tmp/pa$$.pdf /tmp/pb$$.pdf &>/dev/null
cat /tmp/join$$.pdf | pdftk "$input" multistamp - output "$output"
rm /tmp/pa$$.pdf
rm /tmp/pb$$.pdf
rm /tmp/join$$.pdf

For example.. place this in /usr/local/bin/pagestamp.sh and execute like:

pagestamp.sh doc.pdf 3

This will start the page number at page 3.. useful when you have coversheets, title pages and table of contents, etc.

The unfortunate thing is that enscript's --footer option is broken, so you cannot get the page numbering at the bottom using this method.

Trochelminth answered 25/4, 2012 at 21:10 Comment(0)

You can use the free and open source pdftools to add page numbers to a PDF file with a single command line.

The command line you could use is (on GNU/Linux you have to escape the $ sign in the shell, on Windows it is not necessary):

pdftools.py --input-file ./input/wikipedia_algorithm.pdf --output ./output/addtext.pdf --text "\$page/\$pages" br 1 1 --overwrite

Regarding the --text option:

The first parameter is the text to add. Some placeholders are available. $page stands for the current page number, while $pages stands for the total number of pages in the PDF file. Thus the option so formulated would add something like "1/10" for the first page of a 10-page PDF document, and so on for the following pages
The second parameter is the anchor point of the text box. "br" will position the bottom right corner of the text box
The third parameter is the horizontal position of the anchor point of the text box as a percentage of the page width. Must be a number between 0 and 1, with the dot . separating decimals
The fourth parameter option is the vertical position of the anchor point on the text box as a percentage of the page height. Must be a number between 0 and 1, with the dot . separating decimals

Disclaimer: I'm the author of pdftools

Pliner answered 20/5, 2020 at 20:25 Comment(11)

thank you! I tried this but it only shows / without putting the page numbers... it is like the $page $pages variables dont populate... – Ostap 18/7, 2020 at 14:52

@Ostap If you are on GNU/Linux, you have to escape the $ sign from the shell, so you have to write \$ and not just $: call it pdftools.py [...] --text \$page/\$pages [...] – Pliner 25/1, 2021 at 11:0

with single quotes, shell doesn't interpolate. '$page / $pages' – Chilopod 16/5, 2021 at 10:29

But how to move the br so it's not right down against the corner? I've tried br 5 5, br -10 -10 -- it goes off page or doesn't show up – Chilopod 16/5, 2021 at 10:31

@Chilopod what is the end result you are trying to achieve? You can also open an issue on the GitHub page of pdftools. br 0.9 0.9 will put the bottom right corner of the text box you are adding 90% from the left margin of the page and 90% from the top margin of the page – Pliner 16/5, 2021 at 22:15

The two numbers after br are between 0 and 1 – Pliner 16/5, 2021 at 22:16

that was exactly it, somehow I got stuck thinking about absolute units – Chilopod 16/5, 2021 at 22:43

Also for some reason the temp directory is not removed automatically after a successful run. – Shoreline 1/12, 2021 at 6:15

@DmitriChubarov can you open an issue on github and type the exact command line you used? I tested it again on my system and I cannot find the temp directory after a successful run – Pliner 1/12, 2021 at 8:31

Ah, sorry, I was running with --debug flag. Thank you for the hint. – Shoreline 2/12, 2021 at 4:52

@DmitriChubarov yeah that would explain it – Pliner 2/12, 2021 at 16:39

Oh, it's a long time since I used postscript, but a quick dip into the blue book will tell you :) www-cdf.fnal.gov/offline/PostScript/BLUEBOOK.PDF

On the other hand, Adobe Acrobat and a bit of javascript would also do wonders ;)

Alternatively, I did find this: http://www.ghostscript.com/pipermail/gs-devel/2005-May/006956.html, which seems to fit the bill (I didn't try it)

Recurve answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:28 Comment(0)

I am assuming you are looking for a PS-based solution. There is no page-level operator in PS that will allow you to do this. You need to add a footer-sort of thingy in the PageSetup section for each page. Any scripting language should be able to help you along.

Grill answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:47 Comment(1)

I saw a solution with Perl in osti.gov/bridge/… – Rechaba 21/10, 2009 at 21:15

I tried pspdftool (http://sourceforge.net/projects/pspdftool).

I eventually got it to work, but at first I got this error:

pspdftool: xreftable read error

The source file was created with pdfjoin from pdfjam, and contained a bunch of scans from my Epson Workforce as well as generated tag pages. I couldn't figure out a way to fix the xref table, so I converted to ps with pdf2ps and back to pdf with pdf2ps. Then I could use this to get nice page numbers on the bottom right corner:

pspdftool 'number(start=1, size=20, x=550 pt, y=10 pt)' input.pdf output.pdf

Unfortunately, it means that any text-searchable pages are no longer searchable because the text was rasterized in the ps conversion. Fortunately, in my case it doesn't matter.

Is there any way to fix or empty the xref table of a pdf file without losing what pages are searchable?

Purposive answered 3/6, 2013 at 19:29 Comment(1)

Is there any way to fix or empty the xref table of a pdf file without losing what pages are searchable? -> you should open a new question for this – Pliner 1/12, 2021 at 8:37

I took captaincomic's solution and added support for filenames containing spaces, plus giving some more informations about the progress

#!/bin/bash
clear
echo
echo This skript adds pagenumbers to a given .pdf file.
echo 
echo This skript needs the packages pdftk and enscript
echo if not installed the script will fail.
echo use the command sudo apt-get install pdftk enscript
echo to install.
echo 
input="$1"
output="${1%.pdf}-header.pdf"
echo input file is $input
echo output file will be $output
echo 
pagenum=$(pdftk "$input" dump_data | grep "NumberOfPages" | cut -d":" -f2)
enscript -L1 --header='||Page $% of $=' --output - < <(for i in $(seq "$pagenum"); do echo; done) | ps2pdf - | pdftk "$input" multistamp - output "$output"
echo done.

Hedgepeth answered 8/5, 2015 at 7:3 Comment(0)

I wrote the following shell script to solve this for LaTeX beamer style slides produced with inkscape (I pdftk cat the slides together into the final presentation PDF & then add slide numbers using the script below):

#!/bin/sh

# create working directory
tmpdir=$(mktemp --directory)

# read un-numbered beamer slides PDF from STDIN & create temporary copy
cat > $tmpdir/input.pdf

# get total number of pages
pagenum=$(pdftk $tmpdir/input.pdf dump_data | awk '/NumberOfPages/{print $NF}')

# generate latex beamer document with the desired number of empty but numbered slides
printf '%s' '
\documentclass{beamer}
\usenavigationsymbolstemplate{}
\setbeamertemplate{footline}[frame number]
\usepackage{forloop}
\begin{document}
 \newcounter{thepage}
  \forloop{thepage}{0}{\value{thepage} < '$pagenum'}{
    \begin{frame}
    \end{frame}
  }
\end{document}
' > $tmpdir/numbers.tex

# compile latex file into PDF (2nd run needed for total number of pages) & redirect output to STDERR
pdflatex -output-directory=$tmpdir numbers.tex >&2 && pdflatex -output-directory=$tmpdir numbers.tex >&2

# add empty numbered PDF slides as background to (transparent background) input slides (page by
# page) & write results to STDOUT
pdftk $tmpdir/input.pdf multibackground $tmpdir/numbers.pdf output -

# remove temporary working directory with all intermediate files
rm -r $tmpdir >&2

The script reads STDIN & writes STDOUT printing diagnostic pdflatex output to STDERR.

So just copy-paste the above code in a text file, say enumerate_slides.sh, make it executable (chmod +x enumerate_slides.sh) & call it like this:

./enumerate_slides.sh < input.pdf > output.pdf [2>/dev/null]

It should be easy to adjust this to any other kind of document by adjusting the LaTeX template to use the proper documentclass, paper size & style options.

edit: I replaced echo by $(which echo) since in ubuntu symlinks /bin/sh to dash which overrides the echo command by a shell internal interpreting escape sequences by default & not providing the -E option to override this behaviour. Note that alternatively you could escape all \ in the LaTeX template as \\.

edit: I replaced $(which echo) by printf '%s' since in zsh, which echo returns echo: shell built-in command instead of /bin/echo. See this question for details why I decided to use printf in the end.

Sideswipe answered 6/6, 2015 at 15:24 Comment(0)

I have used LibreOffice Draw for this. Adding a page number field is easy using Insert->Field->Page Number. And then you can copy-and-paste this field to other pages; fortunately the position is not changed and the copy-and-paste can be done quickly with down arrow key and Ctrl+V. Worked for me for a 30 page article. Maybe prone to errors for a 500+ one!

Helvetic answered 12/1, 2022 at 8:30 Comment(1)

“LibreOffice Calc”? No, it’s LibreOffice Draw. I use it sometimes to add a few things to PDF files, but it often destructs a lot of things, unfortunately. – Condescension 6/6, 2023 at 0:44

It's possible with pdfcpu:

pdfcpu stamp add -mode text -- "Pag. %p  " "scale:.4 abs, pos:br, rot:0  margins:10" in.pdf out.pdf

You can add a lot of options: look at its website.

As alternative, with GUI, there's jPDF Tweak.

Outrageous answered 14/3 at 17:12 Comment(0)

-1

Maybe pstops (part of psutils) can be used for this?

Overthrow answered 21/10, 2009 at 20:23 Comment(1)

I've spent quite a bit of time on it, and it seems like psutils won't do it - unless I'm missing something. – Rechaba 21/10, 2009 at 20:42

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