CUPS-PDF PostProcessing - How to make a TIFF printer

**epedersen** · April 17th, 2009

Warning: The problem with using this method to create TIFFs is that the CUPS-PDF printer is hacked and will continue to generate TIFFs until the /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf 'PostProcessing' line is commented out again. It's not hard to fix, but it's not pretty. Maybe someone else can run with this and come up with a more elegant solution.

Proceed at your own risk.

I needed to make a TIFF-creation printer, rather than a PDF printer. Luckily there is a good template to work from using the 'cups-pdf' package. The cups-pdf package is installed from the terminal with the following command:

Code:

apt-get install cups-pdf

I modified the cups-pdf.conf file to de-comment the 'PostProcessing' section and added the path to my post-processing script (included below). The pdfpostproc.sh script probably shouldn't be in the /etc/cups folder, but I'm lazy and don't want to have to look for things.

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf

Change:

Code:

### Key: PostProcessing
#<Comments removed for clarity>
# PostProcessing

To:

Code:

### Key: PostProcessing
#<Comments removed for clarity>
PostProcessing /etc/cups/pdfpostproc.sh

Save the 'pdfpostproc.sh.txt' file (below) as '/etc/cups/pdfpostproc.sh' and change it to be executable with:

Code:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/cups/pdfpostproc.sh

Restart the CUPS server with:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

Try printing a test page. Go to 'System', 'Administration', 'Printing', and right-click on the 'PDF' printer. Choose 'Properties', and click on 'Print Test Page'. There should be a file called Test_Page.TIF in your ~/PDF folder. (You may have to make a PDF folder under /home/<your username>/ folder before the script works properly. Also, please see the reference to AppArmor below.)

This project was inspired by this thread. I shamelessly took the author's "pdfpostproc.sh" script and hacked it to bits.

A NOTE ABOUT APPARMOR
You may need to modify AppArmor's behavior with the following code, otherwise no TIFF's will be created:

Code: