PDF Depasswordization

In my company I’m getting payslips as encrypted PDF. So, I need to know my password to open these files. That is completely right and I’m pleased that my personal information is secured.

BUT. If I try to print such document, the quality is so low, so I can barely understand what is written there.

This «protection» option along with some others can be enabled when PDF is being encrypted. And I couldn’t find a way to disable it or enhance quality for printing. I tried to do it with Acrobat Reader and Google Chrome. Printing to PDF also didn’t help.

Why do I need to print these papers? It’s required in 90% of cases when you want to rent a flat, for example.

What I don’t understand is this stupid restriction. I already opened the file and I see it in a perfect quality right now on my laptop screen. I can make a high resolution screenshot and print it! Why PDF readers make my life less comfortable?

Anyway, it worth just a little effort to find more appropriate solution for this. QPDF do the trick:

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qpdf --decrypt --password='*******' infile.pdf outfile.pdf

My version of qpdf didn’t allow to decrypt source PDF file in-place, so I used the following script to convert all required files in a directory:

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for f in *
do
    qpdf --decrypt --password='123456' "${f}" "${f%%.*}-1.pdf"
    mv -f "${f%%.*}-1.pdf" "$f"
done