PDF Utilities & Tools
Comprehensive PDF manipulation toolkit for merging, splitting, compressing, rotating, and transforming PDF documents
Overview
PDF Utilities provides PDF manipulation operations for the full range of document workflows. Core operations available: merge, split, flatten (convert filled form fields to static content), rotate, compress, password protect, and convert to/from PDF format. For overlay generation — the process of writing filled field values onto a PDF page — the system composites filled values onto the source document, with text auto-sized to fit the field bounds. Page rotation correctly remaps visual coordinates to the PDF mediabox for pages rotated at 0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°. All operations are workspace-scoped.
Key Capabilities
- Merge PDFs: Combine multiple PDFs into a single document
- Split PDF: Separate a PDF into individual pages or defined page ranges
- Flatten (Fill to Static): Convert filled interactive form fields to static PDF content, removing editability
- Rotate Pages: Correct page orientation for 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° rotations, with coordinate remapping
- Compress PDF: Reduce file size using PDF optimization (image downsampling, font subsetting, unused resource removal)
- Password Protection: Encrypt PDFs with owner and user passwords
- Convert to/from PDF: Format conversion via Adobe PDF Services
- Overlay Generation: Write field values onto pages — text is auto-sized from field height metadata and composited onto the source document
- Field Detection: Extract form fields and their positions from uploaded PDFs
- Browser Rendering: Render PDFs in the browser for in-app preview and editing
How It Works
Merge PDFs
What Happens: The page trees of the input PDFs are concatenated into a new document. All operations are workspace-scoped — files belonging to other workspaces are not accessible.
Process:
- Upload multiple PDFs into the workspace
- Select "Merge PDFs" and specify document order
- The page trees are merged into a single document
- The resulting PDF is stored in Azure Blob Storage under the workspace's scope
- Download the merged PDF
Split PDF
What Happens: The specified page range is extracted from the source document's page tree, producing a new PDF containing only those pages.
Process:
- Upload source PDF into the workspace
- Specify split method: page range, individual page extraction, or split every N pages
- The page subset is extracted into a new document
- Download extracted pages as a separate PDF
Compress PDF
What Happens: Compression applies PDF optimization (image downsampling, unused resource removal, font subsetting) to the uploaded file via Adobe PDF Services.
Process:
- Upload the PDF into the workspace
- Select compression level (Low / Medium / High)
- The selected optimization profile is applied
- The compressed PDF is returned and stored in Azure Blob Storage under the workspace scope
- Download the compressed file
Rotate Pages
What Happens: Field coordinate rectangles are remapped from visual space into the correct PDF mediabox coordinates for the target rotation (0°, 90°, 180°, or 270°). The rotation value is then written into the page.
Process:
- Upload PDF with incorrect page orientation
- Select target pages and rotation angle (90° / 180° / 270° clockwise)
- Field positions are recalculated for the new rotation
- Page rotation is applied and the corrected PDF is stored in the workspace
Flatten (Fill to Static)
What Happens: After field values are written via the overlay process, the flatten operation removes all interactive form field annotations from the PDF, producing a static document. Filled text is sized from field height metadata and burned into the page content. The resulting PDF contains rendered text with no editable fields.
Process:
- A filled form session produces a PDF with interactive fields containing values
- Flatten is applied: field annotations are removed and the overlay content is burned into the page
- The static PDF is stored in Azure Blob Storage scoped to the workspace
- The flattened file is available for download or sharing
Use Cases
PDF utilities support document preparation tasks that integrate directly with the form-filling workflow. Legal teams flatten filled contract PDFs to produce tamper-evident static documents before filing. Healthcare providers merge multiple patient form PDFs into a single ordered record. Development teams use the split operation to extract individual pages from large scanned batches before processing each page as a separate source document. Organizations that need to archive completed forms use the flatten operation to ensure the archived files cannot be edited after signing.
Benefits
- No External Dependencies for End Users: Merge, split, rotate, compress, and convert happen within the platform without requiring a local PDF editor
- Accurate Rotation Handling: Field coordinates are correctly remapped for all four rotation states, avoiding misaligned text on rotated pages
- Overlay Precision: Overlay text is auto-sized from field height metadata, fitting the original field bounds
- Workspace Isolation: All operations are workspace-scoped; files from other workspaces are never accessible
- Format Conversion Coverage: PDF optimization and format conversion are handled via Adobe PDF Services without a separate third-party subscription for end users
- Specialized Processing Pipeline: Structural operations, overlay generation, and field extraction each use purpose-optimized processing paths
Security & Privacy
All data is workspace-scoped and protected by JWT authentication middleware across all service layers. PDF files are stored in Azure Blob Storage and are only accessible within the workspace that uploaded them. Flatten operations permanently remove interactive field annotations, which prevents downstream editing of finalized documents. Password protection uses standard PDF encryption. Files processed by Adobe PDF Services are submitted over TLS and are not retained by Adobe beyond the processing operation.
Common Questions
What's the maximum PDF size for utilities?
File size limits depend on the operation and plan tier. For files that exceed synchronous processing limits, operations are queued for background processing. Very large scanned PDFs (several hundred MB) are accommodated by splitting the document first, processing each chunk separately, and then merging the results.
Most form-filling source documents are well under 50 MB. Flattened output PDFs are typically smaller than the original interactive PDFs because the overlay is a lightweight layer composited over the existing page content.
Does compression reduce PDF quality?
Compression applies PDF optimization including image downsampling, unused object removal, and font subsetting via Adobe PDF Services. Text content (vector-based) is not degraded by compression at any level. Image quality degrades in proportion to the compression level selected: low compression applies minimal downsampling, medium applies a balanced optimization profile, and high applies maximum downsampling. Documents that consist primarily of vector content (typed forms, contracts) see file size reduction with no perceptible quality loss. Documents with embedded photographs or scanned image content will show visible image quality reduction at high compression settings.
Try medium compression first. If the result is acceptable, use it consistently. If image quality is insufficient, switch to low compression.
Can I batch process PDFs via API?
Yes. All PDF utility operations are accessible via the platform's API. Merge, split, rotate, compress, flatten, and convert endpoints accept workspace-scoped file references and return the processed output. All API calls are authenticated via JWT middleware and workspace-scoped. Batch jobs that process many files can take several minutes; use webhooks to receive notification on completion rather than polling.
Common automated use cases: nightly flatten of all filled forms produced during the day, merge of contract components for a batch of clients, or split of large scanned batches into per-page files for individual processing.
How does the overlay generation work?
When a filled form session is finalized, the system creates a canvas sized to match the source PDF page dimensions. For each filled field, it renders the value at a font size derived from the field's height metadata. The canvas is composited onto the corresponding page of the source PDF, merging the two page content streams. The result is a PDF where the filled values appear visually in the correct positions on each page. If the page has a non-zero rotation, field coordinates are mapped from visual space into the PDF's unrotated mediabox coordinate space before the overlay is positioned, ensuring the text lands correctly on rotated pages.
Can I automate PDF workflows?
Yes. PDF utility operations are available via the REST API and can be chained in any sequence your workflow requires. A typical post-fill automation: fill session completes, flatten is called to produce a static PDF, compress is called to reduce file size for email delivery, and the result is stored in Azure Blob Storage under the workspace scope. All steps use the same JWT-authenticated API. Webhook notifications can trigger downstream steps on operation completion.