Pulling Graphics out of PDFs.

[BetterThanLife]

Is there an easy, cheap way to pull graphics out of a PDF document? (Aside from the obvious of printing the page then scanning it.) Not for nefarious purposes, simply to be able to use them in an onlineRPG, using Sceenmonkey or some other package.

 

[vutpakdi]

Yes, there are a couple of ways.

The easiest is to use the Snapshot Tool in Acrobat Reader to select the desired graphic and then copy it to another document. This method may only work with unprotected PDF documents.

Another method, which works with protected documents but has resolution limitations is to display the desired graphic and then take a screen capture (of the entire screen or just the portion of the screen with the graphic on it).

Ron

 

[Michael Taylor]

Or, rasterize the PDF in photoshop and chop out the unwanted bits.

Or, open the PDF in freehand or illustrator and chop out the bit you want.

 

[Flynn]

If you check out the pdf995.com website, there's another program available there that converts files from one format to another. You can use it to convert PDFs to image files, and then play with the images to crop out the image you want. It's a simple two step process:

First, use PDF995 or Adobe Acrobat to save the single page you want to convert to a new PDF file.

Second, use the free converter app to convert the single-page PDF to an image.

Hope that helps,
Flynn

 

[vutpakdi]

If you happen to have Canvas from ACD Systems, you can also use Canvas to open PDFs, extract desired bits (or otherwise edit the file)), and then save the result into a number of formats (yet another reason why I love Canvas).

Ron

 

[Ben W Bell]

The full version of Adobe Acrobat lets you export images, just say the resolution you want and it will grab every image out of the document and put it in a folder for you. Unfortunately this isn't a cheap solution.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Adobe Photoshop does a great job of pulling images out of PDFs. (Though it isn't exactly cheap.) I guess the only other real option is a Copy of Acrobat. (Though I never could get confirmation that it actually does the job.) Both are expensive. I haven't found anything else that really works. (Now to come up with the funds.)

 

[clementk]

FWIW, there are some tools to replace or supplement the screen capture function. Sorry I can't remember the name of the one I'm thinking of right now. They're mainly designed for business work or making tutorials but I've found it comes in handy.

Have you tried a trial version of Photoshop (or do they even offer that anymore?)? If you only need it for one graphic...and you can always buy Photoshop later if you like it.

If you *do* earlier versions might still do what you want and be much cheaper. Or at least they used to offer them, I'm behind on Adobe. Ugh. Versionitis.

Hmmm, you might also want to try GSview (Ghostscript). There're several related programs. Depending on the source pdf it might be able to convert the pdf or parts of it to several different graphic formats.

HTH.

(edit: added GSview)

 

[daltoncalford]

Best Method,

Download Knoppix or Mandrake Move or, well any version of CD-Bootable linux. (They are free)

Burn the cdimage to cdrom and boot up with linux.

from the command prompt, run

pdfimages -j input_file ./

That runs the program pdfimages, tells it to write jpeg files if the original was a pdf, ppm otherwise and then, write them to the current directory.

That will extract every image, in full resolution stored in the pdf, and saves the files in numbered format (001.jpg, 002.jpg etc)

You can also use pdftext to extract the full text of a pdf.

If you are interested, I can post links and howto's on how to get the job done.

best regards

Dalton

 

[BetterThanLife]

Is that included in the basic Linux build? (I have SUSE 9.1 on the other computer but haven't tried this yet. (Unfortunately I don't have enough time this afternoon to do this.)
Thanks! Exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

 

[daltoncalford]

It is included in most bootable cd versions, and it is included in the ghostview package so if you have full cups printing support installed, you should have it.
Go into YAST and do a search for installed or installable software looking for pdfimages as the file name.

best regards

Dalton