pdfcpu is the reason I stopped using pdftk.

Thank you for saying that, pdftk has been a wonderful tool for me over the years, but if pdfcpu can replace it and thus rid me of my final Java dependency it would be wonderful.

Strong endorsement. I’m fine with pdftk except for rotating pages: it seems to be using annotations vs actually rotating the image in the pdf. I’m using some odd software that chooses to ignore these annotations and so even though I fixed the page orientation with pdftk in the source pdf, that software will still display it with the wrong orientation (and fail at ocr for that page)

I’m hoping pdfcpu does the right thing instead and actually rotates the image in the file.

  cpdf -upright in.pdf -o out.pdf

will set the page rotation to zero, counter-rotating the page dimensions and content to compensate, leaving it visually unaltered.

(Disclaimer: I wrote it)

Oh that is what I am using. May need to look into that

That is impressive, Should take a dive into pdfcpu

This is a nice usecase for pdfcpu. If you are pdftk user give the pdfcpu CLI a spin. It is multi platform and has some nice features baked in. https://pdfcpu.io/