This is a small Bash script to remove empty pages from a PDF document.

I use it after scanning many pages with a paper feed scanner to a single PDF file. I usually scan in duplex mode though many pages are only used on one side. To get rid of the resulting empty pages in the PDF this script can be used.

To run it ghostscript and pdftk are needed. Both programs can be easily installed in Linux using your package manager (e.g. apt in Debian and Ubuntu or dnf in Fedora). I've tried the script only in Linux.

The script is run by

./remove-blank-pages input-with-blank-pages.pdf output-without-blank-pages.pdf 

The ink coverage threshold determining if a page is considered blank or not is defined in line 7 of the script. Feel free to adjust it to the sensitivity of the scanner if the results are not satisfactorily.