Ubuntu – Right-click convert PDF to JPG

There are several ways to do that. Though all my suggeed ways have one problem they won't really flatten your picture. A more or less good picture would be still required.

One easy way is that you try the software ScanTailor (scantailor.org)

sudo apt-get install scantailor 

It takes you through 6 steps to optimize your photos. At the last step you can select the option "Equalize illumination" this will give you a nice clean look!

Personally I usually just use GIMP. But you need some basic skills to reach your aim.

sudo apt-get install gimp 

1. crop the picture in the wanted way
2. use the Colors -> Curves option to manipulate the color output in a way you want it...

Another nice little program is gscan2pdf, where you can also load photos and export them as PDF. There is is even a link to GIMP so you can improve the photo with the above described steps.

sudo apt-get install gscan2pdf 

What I do is the following --- it is not as versatile as you asked, but it works almost ok. You need to have all your printers defined, and then you need these two scripts:

1. stop_printers:

   #!/bin/bash -f
   #
   allp=(`cat /etc/printcap | tr "|" "\t" | cut -f 1 | grep -v "#"`)
   for i in ${allp[@]}; do 
       echo -n Printer $i:
       cupsdisable "$i"
       echo " " paused.
   done
   

2. start_printers:

   #!/bin/bash -f
   #
   allp=(`cat /etc/printcap | tr "|" "\t" | cut -f 1 | grep -v "#"`)
   for i in ${allp[@]}; do 
       echo -n Printer $i:
       cupsenable "$i"
       echo " " restarted.
   done
   

You have to put them in your path (for example ~/bin) and make them executable with chmod +x. CAVEAT: I do not have any printer with spaces in their names. The scripts are not tested in that case (but I am sure that one of our shell script's gurus will fix the scripts in a flash ;-)... )

Now, you can issue:

[romano:~] % stop_printers
Printer PDF:  paused.
Printer ColorDEA:  paused.
Printer Deskjet_6980:  paused.
Printer fotocop5:  paused.

And you can print from wherever you want, the printer will be paused:

You can see your queue:

[romano:~] % lpq -PDeskjet_6980
Deskjet_6980 is not ready
Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)                         Total Size
1st     romano  439     Bones_3+RG.pdf — Flesh depth  125952 bytes

(AFAIK, the print queues are persistent across reboots). And when you want to print:

[romano:~] % start_printers         
Printer PDF:  restarted.
Printer ColorDEA:  restarted.
Printer Deskjet_6980:  restarted.
Printer fotocop5:  restarted.

Using lprm you can remove a job if you need to; lpr to enqueue a document via command line, and if you want different "lists", no one forbids defining the same printer several times with different names.

You can also resume each printer by hand, it's just a matter of running cupsenable <printername> from the prompt.

What I do not think you can do with this solution is changing the print options after the fact --- you will have to dequeue and re-enqueue the document for this.