Question

Does anyone know of a “FREE” command line tool that can lock a pdf from a user being able to print it. I need to be able to put this in a batch to loop through a folder and disable printing from adobe standard and reader. Is this possible to do it from command line with any tool?

Answer 1

First, pdftk:

You can use pdftk for (available for Linux, Unix, Mac OS X and Windows) to set an "owner password":

pdftk \
  input.pdf \
  output semi-protected.pdf \
  owner_pw "supersecret" 

Result is this, for example:

pdfinfo semi-protected.pdf | grep Encrypted:

  Encrypted:      yes (print:no copy:no change:no addNotes:no)

You can modify the command to additionally require a user password to open the PDF:

pdftk \
  input.pdf \
  output semi-semi-protected.pdf \
  owner_pw "supers3cr3t" \
  user_pw "s3cr3t"

You can modify the command to (selectively) "allow" other user actions:

pdftk \
  input.pdf \
  output semi-semi-protected.pdf \
  owner_pw "supers3cr3t" \
  allow ModifyContents \
  allow CopyContents \
  allow ScreenReaders \
  allow ModifyAnnotations

Result may be this, for example:

pdfinfo semi-semi-protected.pdf | grep Encrypted:

  Encrypted:      yes (print:no copy:yes change:yes addNotes:yes)

Second, podofoencrypt:

Commandline example:

podofoencrypt \
   --rc4v2 \
   -o "supers3cr3t" \
   -u "s3cr3t" \
   --edit \
   --copy \
   --editnotes \
   --fillandsign \
   --accessible \
   --assemble \
     input.pdf \
     semi-protected.pdf 

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Big, fat caveat:

You should be aware, that this way of ‘protecting’ PDF files is by no means super-secure. There are quite a lot of PDF cracker software utilities out there which easily un-protect your PDF files. This method is only a very basic means to prevent most noobie computer users to mess with your files.

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In addition, see also

Third, qpdf:

in Martin Schröder’s answer!