change background color in evince PDF files

please do it soon as many of us are facing with this problem...

Hi Shreyansh,

That feature is not available in the current version of evince.

A workaround is to add a background to the current pdf file.

Use the vector drawing program inkscape to make a new document of the correct paper size. Draw a box and give it t background color you wish to use. Use 'save as' to save the document as an pdf - called it 'background.pdf'

Use the pdf toolkit (package 'pdftk') to set this 'background.pdf' as the background for your pdf document by using this command:

  pdftk oldfile.pdf background background.pdf output newfile.pdf

Now newfile.pdf have 'background.pdf' as the background on all pages.

Nice hack.. :-)

--

Jakob Hilmer

Hi Jakob,

I've been trying to solve the same problem and I tried your hack above. I'm getting an error:

ajita@ajita-desktop:~$ pdftk menu.pdf background background.pdf output newfile.pdf
Error: Failed to open PDF file:
   menu.pdf
Errors encountered. No output created.
Done. Input errors, so no output created.
ajita@ajita-desktop:~$
ajita@ajita-desktop:~$

My pdf file names are correct and I do have pdftk installed. What do you think the problem is? I'm using Ubuntu 8.10 and also have PDF editor and Pdfshuffler installed, if that could be of any help.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could help.

Ajita wrote:
> Question #67616 on evince in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/evince/+question/67616
>
> Ajita requested for more information:
> Hi Jakob,
>
> I've been trying to solve the same problem and I tried your hack above.
> I'm getting an error:
>
> ajita@ajita-desktop:~$ pdftk menu.pdf background background.pdf output newfile.pdf
> Error: Failed to open PDF file:
> menu.pdf
> Errors encountered. No output created.
> Done. Input errors, so no output created.
> ajita@ajita-desktop:~$
> ajita@ajita-desktop:~$
>
>
Hi Ajita,

Can you view the sperate files menu.pdf and background.pdf with an pdf
viewer? It sounds like your menu.pdf file is corrupt or not in the
current working directory.

--
Jakob Hilmer

Thanks for your fast response, Jakob.

The files are good and in the same directory. Something else is going on. The matter is not as urgent for me anymore because I heard back from the person who created the pdf and he had the original file as a publisher (.pub) file. So I found a windows system, (Eeeeek, I know) and fixed the problem. Again, thanks for your help, I have more time now to figure out what's going on with my install of pdftk.

how do i change the background color in inkscape?

if you have compiz, you can use accessability->Negative.
default key is <Super> n.
you can see inverted color. (background -> black)

@andyw

Evince has a inverted colors built-in option. Go View > Inverted Colors or press Control + I. Also you can add a inverted color icon in the toolbar (Right click in the toolbar and drag the "inverted colors" to the toolbar)

I wonder if could be interesting to open a bug for installing the "inverted colors" icon in the toolbar by default. This way users get awareness easily of its existence .