Krop, install the tool for cropping PDF files in Ubuntu

about krop

In the next article we are going to take a look at Krop. This is a simple graphical tool to crop the pages of PDF files. Now a .deb package can be easily installed via Snap or packaged into our Ubuntu operating system.

The most special feature that Krop is going to make available to users is its ability to automatically split pages into subpages to fit limited screen size from devices like eReaders. This is particularly useful if your eReader doesn't support typical scrolling.

This is not a unique program, there are multiple possible alternatives to Krop. These include PDF-Shuffler and briss.

General characteristics of Krop

Body can work on any Gnu / Linux distribution recent. What I am not so clear about is that it can be used on Windows or Mac.

It is written in Python and is based on PyQT, python-poppler-qt4 and pyPdf or PyPDF2 for their functionality. It is free software, released under GPLv3 + that according to its author only wants someone to find it useful.

The most interesting feature of krop, at least for me, is its ability to automatically divide pages into subpages. With this, it is intended that the PDF can adapt to the limitation of the size of devices such as eReaders.

pdf krop

In the latest version of Krop the command line option –Go. It will generate a PDF using the –autotrim, –rotate and –whichpages options, without opening the krop GUI. The padding for automatic clipping can be specified as a CSS using one to four values. This option is also available on the command line as –autotrim-padding.

Also, compared to previous versions, string manipulation errors have been fixed when opening files from the command line using python3.

We can learn more about this program from the website from its developer.

Krop limitations

This program unfortunately has some limitations that other programs of this style do not have. At there is no simple way to remove unnecessary / invisible parts from a pdf. Krop only adjusts the displayed parts of a PDF, the original content will still be in the file and therefore will appear when editing the file in inkscape, for example. This results in this application not being suitable for the following tasks:

  • Censor a PDF document.
  • Decrease the size of a PDF file.

Adobe Acrobat if it is able to do these things, but I do not know the existence of any free library with these capabilities that can be added to the program that this post occupies. However, if we can rasterize a PDF (that is, treat its content as a fixed-size image). We can use free software such as ghostscript to censor PDF documents.

Install Krop

Krop is available as a snap application in Ubuntu for the amd64 and armhf architectures, so it can be installed easily by opening the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and executing the command in it:

sudo snap install krop

We will also be able to install this program using the .deb package. This one we will be able to download it from their website. We will only have to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and write:

sudo dpkg -i krop_0.4.13-1_all.deb

This should be enough, but if not, we will have to install dependencies by hand using the following command:

sudo apt install python-poppler-qt4 python-pypdf2

And after finishing the installation of the dependencies, we will proceed to the installation of the .deb package.

Uninstall Krop

If we have installed this program through the snap package, to uninstall it from our Ubuntu system we will simply have to execute the following command in the terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T):

sudo snap remove krop

If we choose to install it using the .deb package and we want to remove it from our system, we can do it from the terminal using the command:

sudo apt remove krop

The creators of this software encourage us to report errors that we can find the mail mail@arminstraub.com. And if, in addition to communicating the errors, the patches with the improvements are included in the email, the creators would be very grateful.


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  1.   Jimmy olano said

    Very good article, in my case I FIRST installed the dependencies of the official Ubuntu repositories:

    sudo apt install python-poppler-qt4 python-pypdf2

    ... and then I tried to install it with "snap" ...
    to find out that I don't have the "snap" package manager installed, so:

    sudo apt-get install snap

    I entered the password and… NOW I HAVE A "Semi-HMM-based Nucleic Acid Parser" ON MY COMPUTER! HA HA HA this is so BECAUSE I was wrong, I should have installed the following (note the "d" at the end)

    sudo apt-get install snapd

    (for more information about snap visit Ubunlog
    https://ubunlog.com/instalar-gestionar-paquetes-snap-ubuntu-u-otra-distribucion/
    )

    Now I did install Krop (if you notice I had to do the same process but in reverse hehehe)

    sudo snap install krop

    I ALSO LIKE TO DOWNLOAD THE SOURCE CODE DIRECTLY (I inserted blank spaces to the web link to "disable it", watch out for that):

    $ wget http: // arminstraub. com /downloads/krop/krop-0.4.13.tar.gz
    $tar xzf krop-0.4.13.tar.gz
    $cd krop-0.4.13
    $python -m krop

    On Twitter search for "#krop from: @ ks7000" to see the images,
    HAPPY DAY!?