pdfseparate

Extract all pages

$ pdfseparate [document.pdf] [output_%d.pdf]

$ pdfseparate -f [1] -l [10] [document.pdf] [output_%d.pdf]

$ pdfseparate -f [5] -l [5] [document.pdf] [page5.pdf]

pdfseparate [-f first] [-l last] [options] input.pdf outputpattern_

pdfseparate splits a PDF into individual pages. Each page becomes a separate PDF file.
The output pattern must contain %d (or variants like %03d) which is replaced with the page number. This enables organized naming of output files.
Page range options extract subsets of the document. Combined with specific page numbers, single pages can be extracted.
The resulting files are standalone PDFs containing one page each. They can be recombined using pdfunite or used individually.
All page content is preserved including annotations, links, and embedded resources.

-f PAGE

First page to extract.

Last page to extract.

Print version.

Print help.

The output pattern uses %d for page numbers:
- `page%d.pdf` produces page1.pdf, page_2.pdf, etc.
- `output-%03d.pdf` produces output-001.pdf, output-002.pdf, etc.

Cannot select non-contiguous pages. Each page is a separate file (no multi-page extraction to single file). Encrypted PDFs need password.

pdfseparate is part of poppler-utils, the open-source PDF utilities derived from Xpdf. It provides simple page extraction without complex dependencies.

pdfunite(1), pdftk(1), qpdf(1), pdfinfo(1)