Insert blank (white) pages between each page in a PDF file from shell

generate_blankpdf.sh

#!/bin/bash

base64 -d <<BASE | gunzip > blank.pdf 
H4sICAEz+lIAA2JsYW5rLnBkZgCNVE1P20AQpa16WXEk970goCXsh712XCGkxB8RIgiU5ECbcjDO
AqHBRs66Cr32RvsTKvXSX1CpVZF6Kn+g6qWnnntHcO9snJCUILWW7PW+ed55b2bk+W0vKLIVE81f
fLj4evH54j3imOJk7witrpKajA/UITYAqZOg01UyJUE3VNKTUdKWa2uop1IZHqP+O+O70Vz8/ahJ
t+nMx1px8/rt3HJt9np57qx+/u3T3OWX+wVUuNr99Xqz8ONN4co9q809vyzcP58JH87+RDJuD0+C
N50cGUMVlnEDmWNhzdMTSXa29o5kpBBpZHtKA0GSHiNSqST9Fi462OQUW9TU6wrDu4hU0yQ7ga8b
pJmGce8kTGUcnRK3QTz5shPJerVCNrBKM+1sZL6E7nCOJq0/mIHr3h0exFiwW8Z0RSCMMYnCwSuc
MOLZN7xJtDT+OkhihTWrjkaudRFS8KZBrdbvq2pDgUAI+NWGwGIU2U6TqCFVi0CrSVP2FVk/Dg+k
my/r+VLZnUzNblV6GxjwgHIpbA2GoS57SZZGsodLg/2mbHdCXXgKW+EIXDL57n8VfH1YcOKCSUjQ
w3yofKTGukNND92WgMYa8IQI3feNTrvXwtpUXW/dJAMfbCKDcyuDG6qwmxzkmXLHiGydyLgcqU4S
t/KjyM7TZzjOut38QeHoWhgfLLZl0fOX/qonHScoZ+owSVcDPwgoFQaltkWpJeD2KeUUGubCEKkx
xQYKh7ADq5lTbZ73tZ1FcsQz3Zxj8SEfeCbgljW8dczIcQhTA87ikNJgo5TgzIMBWvSecMpMyhlj
glvUeUzZAqULSxOG+qncRxQzhujNhS0hDIH38QgTBkznIBLfYJQ5UxgTxjRm8ynMMKe/tWxrmlea
5pmMTWG2Pa2vZNMxptKw05Wp7lqj80qCXVJPEoWdfCDW4/0ED1qrNx5u4dWyxwR0iTm87PBKxYCm
+rbj2zYrMc65WEP/pugR9ZLIPZTRi152jIljcuHSki6oblzZC0zfMzzXdMsVQVmQ/4zCVA26wqjt
oPl5fytAfwDZoOdK3QUAAA==
BASE

file blank.pdf

insblank.sh

#!/bin/bash

INPUT_PDF=$1
BLANK_PDF="blank.pdf"
NUMPAGES=$(pdftk "${INPUT_PDF}" dump_data 2>/dev/null | grep NumberOfPages  | sed 's/[^0-9]*//')
PAGES=$(python -c "print ' B1-1 '.join(['A%d-%d'%(x,x) for x in range(1,${NUMPAGES}+1)])")

pdftk A="${INPUT_PDF}" B="${BLANK_PDF}" cat ${PAGES} output "blanked_${INPUT_PDF}"

usage.txt

Usage:

./insblank.sh yourfile.pdf

Output goes to blanked_yourfile.pdf.

This shell (bash for convenience) script uses pdftk and python. It needs a file herein callede blank.pdf which contains a white page/blank page, which can easily be generated from any program (e.g. OpenOffice).