PDF – Text Annotations and Image Additions Using Free Software

free softwarepdf

I'm mostly interested in annotating a PDF file with text at a predetermined position. GUIs and command line utilities are both Ok, but only free software solutions, please. However, I included image additions for completeness.

To be clear, the annotations must be part of the PDF file, otherwise it is not useful.

There are two similar questions on Ask Ubuntu, but they are both a couple of years old. These are How can I add text and images (for example, a signature) to a PDF? and How can I edit a picture into an existing PDF file?

I've tried Xournal, which does work. However, I think a little tutorial about how to do this would be good, so you want to add a small tutorial on how to use Xournal to accomplish these tasks, please add an answer.

I also tried updf, which didn't work for me, though this answer and this one for example says it can. I rebuilt the package (which is pure Python) on Debian Wheezy, using the sources from the updf PPA. It seems quite primitive and the "Save As" dialog did not even have a save button. If other people have had different experiences, please post.

For each answer, please provide a brief tutorial with screenshots if appropriate, as to how you accomplished this task.

Best Answer

PDF files appear to open in LibreOffice Draw. I did nothing special other than open the file like so:

$ libreoffice carcut_01.pdf

Once in LibreOffice Draw I simply annotated the PDF as if it were a normal document/image. Once done I clicked the PDF icon in Draw's toolbar to export the file out as a new PDF file.

    ss of draw

This was the result of my effort.

    ss of xpdf

But LibreOffice doesn't work for me?

If you're encountering an issue with Draw not being able to do this (I was using version of LibreOffice):

  • Version: 4.1.4.2
  • Build ID: 4.1.4.2-4.fc19

**NOTE:* You might be missing this package which is part of LibreOffice:

$ rpm -aq|grep "libre.*pdf"
libreoffice-pdfimport-4.1.4.2-4.fc19.x86_64

This is what the package looks like on Red Hat based distros such as Fedora. I would assume that on Debian/Ubuntu there is a similarly named package, probably libreoffice-pdfimport.

Alternatives?

You could try Okular.

Okular allows you to review and annotate your documents. Annotations created in Okular are automatically saved in the internal local data folder for each user. Okular does not implicitly change any document it opens.

screenshot

   ss of okular

What else?

As @Terdon's answer shows, you can also use GIMP, along with a whole host of other tools. @Terdon also was kind enough to post this link in our chatroom which has a list of other tools for annotating PDFs as well as viewing them.

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