[Web4lib] Extracting images from PDF?

[Bob Rasmussen]

On Wed, 14 Dec 2005, Robert Sullivan wrote:

> A local labor organization had some old newsletters scanned and
> presented us with 4 CDs of PDFs, with each issue a separate file.
>
> This would be great, except that they were scanned from a bound volume
> 2 pages at a time, so any given file will contain the last page of the
> previous issue and be missing the last page of the issue named.  This
> portends some amount of patron confusion.
>
> I'm considering trying to take these images apart and reassemble them
> in a more useful way.  We have Acrobat 7, but our graphics staff uses
> it at a fairly low level so they can't help me.  I have found
> references to software which will let you save images form PDFs as
> TIFFs, but I was hoping for some real world experience.

Here's a trick that may work, assuming you have a recent Microsoft Office.
Office includes a printer driver called "Microsoft Office Document Image
Writer". Any Windows program can "print" to it. It can be configured to
use as its "Output format" either "MDI"  or "TIFF - Monochrome fax". Under
the latter, you can select resolution as 100, 200, or 300 DPI.

With this driver configured for TIFF, print to it with Acrobat. It will
prompt you for a file name. Give it one. You will end up with a multi-page
TIFF file that should be accessible to any competent graphics program.

Regards,
....Bob Rasmussen,   President,   Rasmussen Software, Inc.

personal e-mail: ras at anzio.com
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