This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see reference.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read forms.md and follow its instructions.

PDF Processing Guide Overview This guide covers essential PDF processing operations using Python libraries and command line tools. For advanced features, JavaScript libraries, and detailed examples, see reference.md. If you need to fill out a PDF form, read forms.md and follow its instructions. Quick Start Python Libraries pypdf Basic Operations Merge PDFs Split PDF Extract Metadata Rotate Pages pdfplumber Text and Table Extraction Extract Text with Layout Extract Tables Advanced Table Extraction reportlab Create PDFs Basic PDF Creation Create PDF with Multiple Pages Command Line Tools pdftotext (poppler utils) qpdf pdftk (if available) Common Tasks Extract Text from Scanned PDFs Add Watermark Extract Images Password Protection Quick Reference Task Best Tool Command/Code Merge PDFs pypdf writer.add page(page) Split PDFs pypdf One page per file Extract text pdfplumber page.extract text() Extract tables pdfplumber page.extract tables() Create PDFs reportlab Canvas or Platypus Command line merge qpdf qpdf empty pages ... OCR scanned PDFs pytesseract Convert to image first Fill PDF forms pdf lib or pypdf (see forms.md) See forms.md Next Steps For advanced pypdfium2 usage, see reference.md For JavaScript libraries (pdf lib), see reference.md If you need to fill out a PDF form, follow the instructions in forms.md For troubleshooting guides, see reference.md When to Use This skill is applicable to execute the workflow or actions described in the overview. Limitations Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above. Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment specific validation, testing, or expert review. Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.

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