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How to remove watermark from PDF file using Python's PyPDF2 lib

I have wrote a code that extracts the text from PDF file with Python and PyPDF2 lib.
Code works good for most docs but sometimes it returns some strange characters. I think thats because PDF has watermark over the page so it does not recognise the text:
import requests
from io import StringIO, BytesIO
import PyPDF2
def pdf_content_extraction(pdf_link):
all_pdf_content = ''
#sending requests
response = requests.get(pdf_link)
my_raw_data = response.content
pdf_file_text = 'PDF File: ' + pdf_link + '\n\n'
#extract text page by page
with BytesIO(my_raw_data) as data:
read_pdf = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(data)
#looping trough each page
for page in range(read_pdf.getNumPages()):
page_content = read_pdf.getPage(page).extractText()
page_content = page_content.replace("\n\n\n", "\n").strip()
#store data into variable for each page
pdf_file_text += page_content + '\n\nPAGE '+ str(page+1) + '/' + str(read_pdf.getNumPages()) +'\n\n\n'
all_pdf_content += pdf_file_text + "\n\n"
return all_pdf_content
pdf_link = 'http://www.dielsdorf.ch/dl.php/de/5f867e8255980/2020.10.12.pdf'
print(pdf_content_extraction(pdf_link))
This is the result that I'm getting:
#$%˘˘
&'(˝˙˝˙)*+"*˜
˜*
,*˜*˜ˆ+-*˘!(
.˜($*%(#%*˜-/
"*
*˜˜0!0˘˘*˜˘˜ˆ
+˜(%
*
*(+%*˜+"*˜'
$*1˜ˆ
...
...
My question is, how can I fix this problem?
Is there a way to remove watermark from page or something like that?
I mean, maybe this problem can be fixed in some other way, maybe the problem is not in that watermark/logo?

The garbled text issue that you're having has nothing to do with the watermark in the document. Your issue seems to be related to the encoding in the document. The German characters within your document should be able to be extracted using PyPDF2, because it uses the latin-1 (iso-8859-1) encoding/decoding model. This encoding model isn't working with your PDF.
When I look at the underlying info of your PDF I note that it was created using these apps:
'Producer': 'GPL Ghostscript 9.10'
'Creator': 'PDFCreator Version 1.7.3
When I look at one of the PDFs in this question also written in German, I note that it was created using different apps:
'/Creator': 'Acrobat PDFMaker 11 für Excel'
'/Producer': 'Adobe PDF Library 11.0'
I can read the second file perfectly with PyPDF2.
When I look at this file from your other question I noted that is also cannot be read correctly by PyPDF2. This file was created with the same apps as the file from this bounty question.
'Producer': 'GPL Ghostscript 9.10'
'Creator': 'PDFCreator Version 1.7.3
This is the same file that throw an error when attempting to extract the text using pdfreader.SimplePDFViewer.
I looked at the bugs for ghostscript and noted that there are some font related issues for Ghostscript 9.10, which was release in 2015. I also noted that some people mentioned that PDFCreator Version 1.7.3 released in 2018 also had some font embedding issues.
I have been trying to find the correct decoding/encoding sequence, but some far I haven't been able to extract the text correctly.
Here are some of the sequences:
page_content.encode('raw_unicode_escape').decode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace'))
# output
\u02d8
\u02c7\u02c6\u02d9\u02dd\u02d9\u02db\u02da\u02d9\u02dc
\u02d8\u02c6!"""\u02c6\u02d8\u02c6!
page_content.encode('ascii', 'xmlcharrefreplace').decode('raw_unicode_escape'))
# output
# ˘
ˇˆ˙˝˙˛˚˙˜
˘ˆ!"""ˆ˘ˆ!
I will keep looking for the correct encoding/decoding sequence to use with PyPDF2. It is worth nothing that PyPDF2 hasn't been updated since May 18, 2016. Also encoding issues is common problem with the module. Plus the maintenance of this module is dead, thus the ports to the modules PyPDF3 and PyPDF4.
I attempted to extract the text from your PDF using PyPDF2, PyPDF3 and PyPDF4. All 3 modules failed to extract the content from the PDF that you provided.
You can definitely extract the content from your document using other Python modules.
Tika
This example uses Tika and BeautifulSoup to extract the content in German from your source document.
import requests
from tika import parser
from io import BytesIO
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
pdf_link = 'http://www.dielsdorf.ch/dl.php/de/5f867e8255980/2020.10.12.pdf'
response = requests.get(pdf_link)
with BytesIO(response.content) as data:
parse_pdf = parser.from_buffer(data, xmlContent=True)
# Parse metadata from the PDF
metadata = parse_pdf['metadata']
# Parse the content from the PDF
content = parse_pdf['content']
# Convert double newlines into single newlines
content = content.replace('\n\n', '\n')
soup = BeautifulSoup(content, "lxml")
body = soup.find('body')
for p_tag in body.find_all('p'):
print(p_tag.text.strip())
pdfminer
This example uses pdfminer to extract the content from your source document.
import requests
from io import BytesIO
from pdfminer.high_level import extract_text
pdf_link = 'http://www.dielsdorf.ch/dl.php/de/5f867e8255980/2020.10.12.pdf'
response = requests.get(pdf_link)
with BytesIO(response.content) as data:
text = extract_text(data, password='', page_numbers=None, maxpages=0, caching=True,
codec='utf-8', laparams=None)
print(text.replace('\n\n', '\n').strip())

import requests
from io import StringIO, BytesIO
import PyPDF2
def remove_watermark(wm_text, inputFile, outputFile):
from PyPDF4 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter
from PyPDF4.pdf import ContentStream
from PyPDF4.generic import TextStringObject, NameObject
from PyPDF4.utils import b_
with open(inputFile, "rb") as f:
source = PdfFileReader(f, "rb")
output = PdfFileWriter()
for page in range(source.getNumPages()):
page = source.getPage(page)
content_object = page["/Contents"].getObject()
content = ContentStream(content_object, source)
for operands, operator in content.operations:
if operator == b_("Tj"):
text = operands[0]
if isinstance(text, str) and text.startswith(wm_text):
operands[0] = TextStringObject('')
page.__setitem__(NameObject('/Contents'), content)
output.addPage(page)
with open(outputFile, "wb") as outputStream:
output.write(outputStream)
wm_text = 'wm_text'
inputFile = r'input.pdf'
outputFile = r"output.pdf"
remove_watermark(wm_text, inputFile, outputFile)

In contrast to my initial assumption in comments to the question, the issue is not some missing ToUnicode map. I didn't see the URL to the file immediately and, therefore, guessed. Instead, the issue is a very primitively implemented text extraction method.
The PageObject method extractText is documented as follows:
extractText()
Locate all text drawing commands, in the order they are provided in the content stream, and extract the text. This works well for some PDF files, but poorly for others, depending on the generator used. This will be refined in the future. Do not rely on the order of text coming out of this function, as it will change if this function is made more sophisticated.
Returns: a unicode string object.
(PyPDF2 1.26.0 documentation, visited 2021-03-15)
So this method extracts the string arguments of text drawing instructions in the content stream ignoring the encoding information in the respectively current font object. Thus, only text drawn using a font with some ASCII'ish encoding are properly extracted.
As the text in question uses a custom ad-hoc encoding (generated while creating the page, containing the used characters in the order of their first occurrence), that extractText method is unable to extract the text.
Proper text extraction methods, on the other hand, can extract the text without issue as tested by Life is complex and documented in his answer.

Extract Text From Non Cpyable Pdf by python

I have been trying to extract text from PDFs , i am using PyPDF2 with python and extracting text but now i am trying to extract text from Non Copyable pdfs. it returns me empty string.
I am converting simple Copyable PDF to Non Copyable PDF online from here : https://online-pdf-no-copy.com/
here is my code :
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
def get_info(path):
with open(path, 'rb') as f:
pdf = PdfFileReader(f)
if pdf.isEncrypted:
pdf.decrypt('')
page = pdf.getPage(1)
# print(page)
print('Page type: {}'.format(str(type(page))))
text = page.extractText()
print(text)
if __name__ == '__main__':
path = 'pdfs/finalNoCopy.pdf'
get_info(path)
My Output :
Page type: <class 'PyPDF2.pdf.PageObject'>
Process finished with exit code 0
it gives me empty string .

You can try this code:
import fitz ## Pip install pymupdf
text1=""
file_path = r'your_file_name_with_path.pdf'
doc = fitz.open(file_path)
for page in doc:
text1+=(page.getText())

How to read a TEXT in an image in PDF extension file using Python?

I have tried reading a PDF file with tabular data with texts and succeed it. But i have an image which is in PDF format and contains some text which need to be fetched for record purpose.All the PDFs are in a specific folder. I know only basics in python.
Could anyone help me with this?

You can extract the both images (inline & XObject) and texts (plain and containing PDF operators) from PDF document using pdfreader
Here is a sample code extracting all the above from all document pages.
from pdfreader import SimplePDFViewer, PageDoesNotExist
fd = open(you_pdf_file_name, "rb")
viewer = SimplePDFViewer(fd)
plain_text = ""
pdf_markdown = ""
images = []
try:
while True:
viewer.render()
pdf_markdown += viewer.canvas.text_content
plain_text += "".join(viewer.canvas.strings)
images.extend(viewer.canvas.inline_images)
images.extend(viewer.canvas.images.values())
viewer.next()
except PageDoesNotExist:
pass
You can also convert images to PIL/Pillow object and save
for i, img in enumerate(images):
img.to_Pillow().save("{}.png".format(i))

How to convert whole pdf to text in python

I have to convert whole pdf to text. i have seen at many places converting pdf to text but particular page.
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
import os
def text_extractor(path):
with open(os.path.join(path,file), 'rb') as f:
pdf = PdfFileReader(f)
###Here i can specify page but i need to convert whole pdf without specifying pages###
page = pdf.getPage(0)
text = page.extractText()
print(text)
if __name__ == '__main__':
path="C:\\Users\\AAAA\\Desktop\\BB"
for file in os.listdir(path):
if not file.endswith(".pdf"):
continue
text_extractor(path)
How to convert whole pdf file to text without using getpage()??

You may want to use textract as this answer recommends to get the full document if all you want is the text.
If you want to use PyPDF2 then you can first get the number of pages then iterate over each page such as:
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
import os
def text_extractor(path):
with open(os.path.join(path,file), 'rb') as f:
pdf = PdfFileReader(f)
###Here i can specify page but i need to convert whole pdf without specifying pages###
text = ""
for page_num in range(pdf.getNumPages()):
page = pdf.getPage(page_num)
text += page.extractText()
print(text)
if __name__ == '__main__':
path="C:\\Users\\AAAA\\Desktop\\BB"
for file in os.listdir(path):
if not file.endswith(".pdf"):
continue
text_extractor(path)
Though you may want to remember which page the text came from in which case you could use a list:
page_text = []
for page_num in range(pdf.getNumPages()): # For each page
page = pdf.getPage(page_num) # Get that page's reference
page_text.append(page.extractText()) # Add that page to our array
for page in page_text:
print(page) # print each page

You could use tika to accomplish this task, but the output needs a little cleaning.
from tika import parser
parse_entire_pdf = parser.from_file('mypdf.pdf', xmlContent=True)
parse_entire_pdf = parse_entire_pdf['content']
print (parse_entire_pdf)
This answer uses PyPDF2 and encode('utf-8') to keep the output per page together.
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
def pdf_text_extractor(path):
with open(path, 'rb') as f:
pdf = PdfFileReader(f)
# Get total pdf page number.
totalPageNumber = pdf.numPages
currentPageNumber = 0
while (currentPageNumber < totalPageNumber):
page = pdf.getPage(currentPageNumber)
text = page.extractText()
# The encoding put each page on a single line.
# type is <class 'bytes'>
print(text.encode('utf-8'))
#################################
# This outputs the text to a list,
# but it doesn't keep paragraphs
# together
#################################
# output = text.encode('utf-8')
# split = str(output, 'utf-8').split('\n')
# print (split)
#################################
# Process next page.
currentPageNumber += 1
path = 'mypdf.pdf'
pdf_text_extractor(path)

Try pdfreader. You can extract either plain text or decoded text containing "pdf markdown":
from pdfreader import SimplePDFViewer, PageDoesNotExist
fd = open(you_pdf_file_name, "rb")
viewer = SimplePDFViewer(fd)
plain_text = ""
pdf_markdown = ""
try:
while True:
viewer.render()
pdf_markdown += viewer.canvas.text_content
plain_text += "".join(viewer.canvas.strings)
viewer.next()
except PageDoesNotExist:
pass

PDF is a page-oriented format & therefore you'll need to deal with the concept of pages.
What makes it perhaps even more difficult, you're not guaranteed that the text excerpts you're able to extract are extracted in the same order as they are presented on the page: PDF allows one to say "put this text within a 4x3 box situated 1" from the top, with a 1" left margin.", and then I can put the next set of text somewhere else on the same page.
Your extractText() function simply gets the extracted text blocks in document order, not presentation order.
Tables are notoriously difficult to extract in a common, meaningful way... You see them as tables, PDF sees them as text blocks placed on the page with little or no relationship.
Still, getPage() and extractText() are good starting points & if you have simply formatted pages, they may work fine.

I found out a very simple way to do this.
You have to follow this steps:
Install PyPDF2 :To do this step if you use Anaconda, search for Anaconda Prompt and digit the following command, you need administrator permission to do this.
pip install PyPDF2
If you're not using Anaconda you have to install pip and put its path
to your cmd or terminal.
Python Code: This following code shows how to convert a pdf file very easily:
import PyPDF2
with open("pdf file path here",'rb') as file_obj:
pdf_reader = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(file_obj)
raw = pdf_reader.getPage(0).extractText()
print(raw)

I just used pdftotext module to get this done easily.
import pdftotext
# Load your PDF
with open("test.pdf", "rb") as f:
pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f)
# creating a text file after iterating through all pages in the pdf
file = open("test.txt", "w")
for page in pdf:
file.write(page)
file.close()
Link: https://github.com/manojitballav/pdf-text

Reading pdf files line by line using python

I used the following code to read the pdf file, but it does not read it. What could possibly be the reason?
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
reader = PdfFileReader("example.pdf")
contents = reader.pages[0].extractText().split("\n")
print(contents)
The output is [u''] instead of reading the content.

import re
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
reader = PdfFileReader("example.pdf")
for page in reader.pages:
text = page.extractText()
text_lower = text.lower()
for line in text_lower:
if re.search("abc", line):
print(line)
I use it to iterate page by page of pdf and search for key terms in it and process further.

May be this can help you to read PDF.
import pyPdf
def getPDFContent(path):
content = ""
pages = 10
p = file(path, "rb")
pdf_content = pyPdf.PdfFileReader(p)
for i in range(0, pages):
content += pdf_content.getPage(i).extractText() + "\n"
content = " ".join(content.replace(u"\xa0", " ").strip().split())
return content

I think you need to specify the disc name, it's missing in your directory. For example "D:/Users/Rahul/Desktop/Dfiles/106_2015_34-76357.pdf". I tried and I can read without any problem.
Or if you want to find the file path using the os module which you didn't really associate with your directory, you can try the following:
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader
import os
def find(name, path):
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(path):
if name in files:
return os.path.join(root, name)
directory = find('106_2015_34-76357.pdf', 'D:/Users/Rahul/Desktop/Dfiles/')
f = open(directory, 'rb')
reader = PdfFileReader(f)
contents = reader.getPage(0).extractText().split('\n')
f.close()
print(contents)
The find function can be found in Nadia Alramli's answer here Find a file in python

To Read the files from Multiple Folders in a directory, below code can be used-
This Example is for reading pdf files:
import os
from tika import parser
path = "/usr/local/" # path directory
directory=os.path.join(path)
for r,d,f in os.walk(directory): #going through subdirectories
for file in f:
if ".pdf" in file: # reading only PDF files
file_join = os.path.join(r, file) #getting full path
file_data = parser.from_file(file_join) # parsing the PDF file
text = file_data['content'] # read the content
print(text) #print the content

def getTextPDF(pdfFileName,password=''):
import PyPDF2
from PyPDF2 import PdfFileReader, PdfFileWriter
from nltk import sent_tokenize
""" Extract Text from pdf """
pdf_file=open(pdfFileName,'rb')
read_pdf=PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
if password !='':
read_pdf.decrypt(password)
text=[]
for i in range(0,read_pdf.getNumPages()):
text.append(read_pdf.getPage(i).extractText())
text = '\n'.join (text).replace("\n",'')
text = sent_tokenize(text)
return text

The issue was one of two things: (1) The text was not on page one - hence a user error. (2) PyPDF2 failed to extract the text - hence a bug in PyPDF2.
Sadly, the second one still happens for some PDFs.

Hello Rahul Pipalia,
If not install PyPDF2 in your python so first install PyPDF2 after use this module.
Installation Steps for Ubuntu (Install python-pypdf)
First, open terminal
After type sudo apt-get install python-pypdf
Your Probelm Solution
Try this below code,
# Import Library
import PyPDF2
# Which you want to read file so give file name with ".pdf" extension
pdf_file = open('Your_Pdf_File_Name.pdf')
read_pdf = PyPDF2.PdfFileReader(pdf_file)
number_of_pages = read_pdf.getNumPages()
#Give page number of the pdf file (How many page in pdf file).
# #param Page_Nuber_of_the_PDF_file: Give page number here i.e 1
page = read_pdf.getPage(Page_Nuber_of_the_PDF_file)
page_content = page.extractText()
# Display content of the pdf
print page_content
Download the PDF from below link and try this code,
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4qad66r2361hvmu/sample.pdf?dl=1
I hope my answer is helpful.
If any query so comments, please.