stampdf

Stamp a short text string in the most suitable location onto every page of a PDF file.

stampdf requires Java to run but is otherwise a fully self-contained shell script(ish) without any other dependencies.

Rationale

The primary use case for stampdf is to automatically add a short identifier (think document number) to each page of a document without obstructing the contents. This is useful when you send out documents that may get printed, annotated by hand, scanned, and sent back to you again (hello, 🇩🇪).

Picking the stamp location happens by using advanced AI models looking at the potential stamp regions and works even when the document consists of scanned imagery. The font size for the identifier is chosen in such a way that it is reasonably readable when the document is printed to fit on an ~A4 page, regardless of actual document dimensions.

Example

In this example 2023-12-16-0003 was stamped onto the page and the best location for that was determined to be along the right edge, on the bottom.

Download

You can get a pre-built "binary" from the releases page.

curl -L https://github.com/pb-/stampdf/releases/download/0.9.0/stampdf -o stampdf
chmod a+x stampdf

Or your can build it yourself (needs Clojure and make):

make release
ls target/stampdf

Usage

See stampdf --help; a possibly outdated version is reproduced below.

stampdf 0.9.0 -- stamp a short text string in the most suitable location onto every page of a PDF

usage: stampdf [OPTION]... INPUT-FILE TEXT

options:
  -i, --in-place         overwrite the input file, use with care
  -o, --output FILENAME  filename of the stamped output file
  -w, --overwrite        overwrite output file if it exists
  -h, --help

please file bugs at https://github.com/pb-/stampdf