How to N-Up Pages in PDF Files in Java (Tutorial)

If you have ever printed slides for a presentation and wanted to save paper when sharing handouts, you might have encountered N-up formatting. N-up is a common pre-print layout technique when working with PDF files and it means arranging multiple pages on a single sheet. For example, 2-up places two pages side by side, while 4-up puts four smaller pages on one sheet.

In the post, I will walk you through the N-up process using our PDF library JPedal.

Download JPedal

You will need to download the JPedal trial jar.

Add the jar to your project

For this example, I am going to use Maven. If you want to use another build system, check out the setup page on our support site.

Install the downloaded jar to your local Maven repository:

mvn install:install-file -Dfile= -DgroupId=com.idrsolutions -Dpackaging=jar -DartifactId=jpedal -Dversion=1.0

Add the following to your pom.xml file:

<dependencies>

    <dependency>

        <groupId>com.idrsolutions</groupId>

        <artifactId>jpedal</artifactId>

        <version>1.0</version>

    </dependency>

</dependencies>

Add to your code

Create an instance of PDF Manipulator and call the N-up method. Applying a scaling factor of one half means the new sheet will be the same size as the original page, which is ideal for printing.

final PdfManipulator pdf = new PdfManipulator();

pdf.loadDocument(new File("inputFile.pdf"));

// Arrange all pages in a 2×2 grid using as many sheets as necessary with a scaling factor of one half.

pdf.nUp(new PageRanges(1, pdf.getPageCount()), 2, 2, 0.5f);

pdf.apply();

pdf.writeDocument(new File("outputFile.pdf"));

pdf.closeDocument();

pdf.reset();

Learn more about the PDF Manipulator API.

We can help you better understand the PDF format as developers who have been working with the format for more than 2 decades!

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});

final PdfManipulator pdf = new PdfManipulator();
pdf.loadDocument(new File("inputFile.pdf"));
pdf.addPage(1, PaperSize.A4_LANDSCAPE);
pdf.addText(1, "Hello World", 10, 10, BaseFont.HelveticaBold, 12, 1, 0.3f, 0.2f);
pdf.addImage(1, new BufferedImage(), new float[] {0, 0, 100, 100});
pdf.rotatePage(1, 90);
pdf.apply();
pdf.writeDocument(new File("outputFile.pdf"));

Viewer viewer = new Viewer();
viewer.setupViewer();
viewer.executeCommand(ViewerCommands.OPENFILE, "pdfFile.pdf");

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractTextAsWordList.writeAllWordlistsToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", -1);

PdfMerge.mergeFiles(new File("inputFile1.pdf"), new File("inputFile2.pdf"), new File("outputFile.pdf"));

PdfManipulator.splitInHalf(new File("inputFile.pdf"), new File("outputFolder"), pageToSplitAt);

PrintPdfPages print = new PrintPdfPages("C:/pdfs/mypdf.pdf");

if (print.openPDFFile()) {
    print.printAllPages("Printer Name");
}

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ExtractClippedImages.writeAllClippedImagesToDir("inputFileOrDirectory", "outputDir", "outputImageFormat", new String[] {"imageHeightAsFloat", "subDirectoryForHeight"});

//Convenience static method (see class for additional options)
ArrayList resultsForPages = FindTextInRectangle.findTextOnAllPages("/path/to/file.pdf", "textToFind");

java -jar jpedal.jar --inspect "inputFile.pdf"

PdfSigner.signPdf(
        "inputFile.pdf",
        "outputFile.pdf",
        "keystorePassword",
        "keystoreFile.p12",
        "signerName",
        "signerLocation",
        "signingReason",
        ACCESS_PERMISSION.P1
);