name: pdf-processing-pro
description: "Advanced PDF manipulation (OCR, forms, tables). Use this skill any time a user wants to: read, extract, merge, split, rotate, watermark, encrypt, decrypt, fill forms, extract tables, or perform OCR on PDF files"
license: Apache 2.0

PDF Processing Pro

Overview

Comprehensive PDF processing capabilities including OCR, form filling, table extraction, and document manipulation.

Capabilities

Document Manipulation

• Merge PDFs: Combine multiple PDFs into one
• Split PDFs: Extract pages or split into multiple files
• Rotate pages: Change page orientation
• Add watermarks: Text or image watermarks
• Encrypt/Decrypt: Password protection

Content Extraction

• OCR: Extract text from scanned PDFs
• Tables: Extract tables to structured data
• Images: Extract embedded images
• Text: Extract searchable text content

Form Processing

• Fill forms: Populate PDF form fields programmatically
• Extract form data: Read form field values
• Analyze forms: Detect form fields and structure

Key Tools

PyPDF2

Basic PDF manipulation (merge, split, rotate)

from PyPDF2 import PdfReader, PdfWriter

# Merge PDFs
writer = PdfWriter()
for pdf in ['file1.pdf', 'file2.pdf']:
    reader = PdfReader(pdf)
    for page in reader.pages:
        writer.add_page(page)
writer.write('merged.pdf')

Tesseract OCR

Extract text from scanned/image PDFs

# OCR a PDF
tesseract input.pdf output -l eng pdf

# Multi-language OCR
tesseract input.pdf output -l eng+por pdf

Tabula/Camelot

Extract tables from PDFs

import tabula

# Extract all tables
tables = tabula.read_pdf('document.pdf', pages='all')

# Extract specific area
tables = tabula.read_pdf('document.pdf', area=[0,0,100,100])

pdftk

Advanced PDF toolkit

# Fill PDF form
pdftk form.pdf fill_form data.fdf output filled.pdf

# Rotate pages
pdftk input.pdf cat 1-endeast output rotated.pdf

# Add password
pdftk input.pdf output secured.pdf user_pw PASSWORD

Workflows

OCR Workflow

1. Check if PDF is searchable
2. If not, convert to images
3. Run OCR with Tesseract
4. Create searchable PDF

Reference: See OCR.md for detailed OCR guide

Form Processing Workflow

1. Analyze form structure
2. Extract field names and types
3. Prepare form data
4. Fill form programmatically

Reference: See FORMS.md for form processing guide

Table Extraction Workflow

1. Identify table pages
2. Extract with Tabula or Camelot
3. Clean and structure data
4. Export to CSV/Excel

Reference: See TABLES.md for table extraction guide

Best Practices

1. Test with sample pages before processing entire document
2. Preserve original files - always work on copies
3. OCR language selection - specify correct language(s)
4. Table extraction - try both Tabula and Camelot for best results
5. Form validation - verify field names before filling

Common Use Cases

Merge Multiple PDFs

# Simple merge
pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf cat output merged.pdf

Extract Specific Pages

# Pages 1-5 and 10
pdftk input.pdf cat 1-5 10 output extracted.pdf

OCR Scanned Document

# OCR with Portuguese + English
tesseract scan.pdf output -l por+eng pdf

Extract Tables

import tabula
df_list = tabula.read_pdf('report.pdf', pages='all')
for i, df in enumerate(df_list):
    df.to_csv(f'table_{i}.csv')

Bundled Resources

Documentation

• OCR.md - Complete OCR processing guide
• FORMS.md - PDF form handling guide
• TABLES.md - Table extraction guide

Scripts

• scripts/analyze_form.py - Analyze PDF form structure

Note: This skill supports both Python (PyPDF2, tabula, camelot) and command-line tools (tesseract, pdftk). Ensure required tools are installed for full functionality.