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Anyone know an easy / free way to split 2-up pdfs on the mac?

Periodically I will scan a few pages from a book and do OCR to save in my references file.  The scan comes out as a landscape oriented 8.5 x 11" image with even pages on the left and odd pages on the right. 

I have Acrobat pro and pdf pen, but neither one seems to be able to do it without duplicating all the pages and then cropping odd / even pages far left / far right.  This is way too much work and can't be automated easily.

I noticed that PDFClerk Pro has this ability, but I already own several paid PDF apps and only want this one feature.

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hey mtaylor,
i would try a graphics program (GIMP or something faster?) and then re-save as PDF. kind of a hack, but i have done this in the past. or perhaps altering your scanning settings to only capture one page per scan...again tedious and hacky, but may work.
g

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thread-killer-apparent

Try this: save a copy, then try selecting all pages in Preview, then, using the cursor, select only the left side, and hit "crop"--it may just crop all the pages the same.  Save it out, repeat with the right side, and use pdf pen to re-integrate.

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All complete speculation.  Good luck!

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Unfortunately, those solutions are no better than my current "Duplicate all pages and then crop hard left and hard right" solution.  I was really hoping that this simple yet useful feature was already in acrobat pro or pdfpen, and I Was just missing it!  (It was difficult to find in pdfclerk, but I Found it!)

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Wow, PDF Clerk looks pretty good--may just have to pick it up in the TheMacBundles bundle...

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Do I understand correctly that your scanned images each cover two facing pages? If so, sounds like adjusting your scan not your editor would be the way to go. I'm fairly new to Snow Leopard and coming directly from Tiger so I'm not sure what applies to which version but I just recently did some scanning and noticed I can have different selection zones, including overlapping, pulled from a single scanning pass. Hopefully you could set your selection zones once and reuse them for each page set scanned.

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Interesting idea, miik.  I'll have to see if my scanner supports that.  Do you have any experience doing this with acrobat's scanning tools?  I have a fujitsu scansnap s300m, btw, which is pretty dumbfire in it's use.

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@mtaylor Launch Apple's Image Capture and your scanner should appear under 'devices'. You can also begin right from PDFPen, that's how I came across this.

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@mtaylor
The ScanSnap most likely will not show up in Image Capture, since it does not use Twain software but uses its own proprietary software.  Could you just clarify something and I'll see if I can help.  When you are scanning in the pages; are you scanning single pages and ending up with two pages to a sheet, or are you scanning pages that are already two pages to a sheet?

already 2 pages to a sheet.

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What about Apple Script? Do you think it's possible to automate the process you use now?

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Automator can't currently do it.  (Can't crop).  I'm not a coder.

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I am no coder either but I have played around with this to try and come up with a solution and I think you can semi-automate your workflow.  If your desired result is to split the page into two separate files it wouldn't be too difficult.  If on the other hand, you want to split the page and then merge the files so that you have two separate pages in one file, it would just be a little more manual work.

You can use Automator to take care of duplicating and opening the files into Acrobat.  Then you can use the "Batch Processing" command found in the "Advanced" menu under "Document Processing" in Acrobat to automate the crop. 

First create a folder and use the ScanSnap software to create a profile that sends scans to that folder.  Then create a workflow in Automator using the following steps and then save it as a "Folder Actions plugin".  Then you enable the folder action for the scan folder and whenever you scan anything into it it is duplicated and then opened in Acrobat.

Automator workflow:
1-Wait for User Action--Once you add something to the scan folder it will trigger the folder action, by using this step first it will prevent the workflow from running until you have finished scanning.  You can put anything you want into the message part of the action, I used (Click “Continue” when finished scanning).
2-Get Specified Finder Items--Select the folder that you will scan into.
3-Get Folder Contents--This selects all the files within the folder above.
4-Duplicate Finder Items
5-Get Specified Finder Items--Select the same folder as in the second step.
6-Get Folder Contents--Same as step 3
7-Open Finder Items--Select "Adobe Acrobat Professional" from the "Open with" pop up.  If you don't see Acrobat listed it may be because it is within a folder in the Apps folder.  Just go to the bottom of the list and select "Other" and a standard open dialog will pop up.

Acrobat workflow:  (Acrobat uses the term "Sequence" but it is the same basic thing.  Also, you will need to make two "Sequences" one for "Left Crop" and one for "Right Crop.)
1-Select the "Batch Processing" command as described above.  A window titled "Batch Sequences" will open.
2-Select "New Sequence" and give it a name. An edit window will open.
3-In the "Edit Batch Sequence" window make sure that the "Run commands on:" step is set to "Files Open in Acrobat"
4-Now select "Select Commands".
5-Another window will open and you can choose commands from the left column. "Crop" is near the bottom.  Double-click on it to add it to the right column.  Once it is in the right column double-click on it again, or click on "Edit", to open the settings window for the "Crop" action.  Choose your settings and close out of all the windows.

Now when you scan something using the profile you created in the ScanSnap software it will be duplicated and opened in Acrobat.  You then just have to use the "Batch Processing" command, select "Left Crop"  and then "Run Sequence" on one file and "Right Crop" on the other.  Once you save the cropped files I would move them to a new location so that the next time you scan they are not duplicated.

I hope this will work for you and please let me know the outcome.

This actually works well to split two up pdfs for imposting.  YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CROP EACH PAGE, use Preview to crop the left hand of the first page.  All subsequent pages will be cropped and then you save as pdf under say name.odd.pdf. Then crop the right side and save as pdf under name.even.pdf.

Now use "Combine PDFs" shareware and "interleave" the two files and save as name.sequential.pdf

Now use "Cheap Imposter" and process as magazine (for small booklets)  Build the pdf.  There will be new and different odd and even pdfs created for manual duplex  (depending how you set it up.) 

Now print on your printer odd pages.  Flip and place back into printer and print even pages.

This limits the process to only 4 steps 1. left crop 2. right crop 3. combine 4. impost

It took me forever to find the simplest way to do this without spending a fortune.  I plan to purchase license for all the shareware since they saved me a load of time.

C Mac

Although PDF files need to be converted first and there is no GUI "unpaper" was built especially for this.

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Thanks for all the information.

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