PdfRipImage 0.2 review

PdfRipImage is a utility to extract images from PDF documents and convert them to a format of your choice

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Neil McPhail

0

PdfRipImage is a utility to extract images from PDF documents and convert them to a format of your choice. You can choose to extract whole pages or just the images contained in them.

The program is available as a GNOME graphical version.

Requirements:
pdfimages and pdftoppm from the Xpdf package
various pnmto routines from the netpbm package

Installing

The source code is presented in a compressed format. Move the file to the required install directory and type:

$ tar -xvzf pdfripimage*.tar.gz
$ cd pdfripimage

The program is compiled with:

$ ./configure
$ make

If there are any significant errors, you are probably missing some important libraries or programs. Ensure you have installed the GTK+2 and GNOME2 libraries and header files. All being well, you can install the program by becoming "root" and typing:

# make install

Usage

After installation, PdfRipImage may appear on your applications menu. If it does, click on this to launch the program. If not, launch it from the command line:

$ pdfripimage

You can pass a file to rip via the command line:

$ pdfripimage /home/me/Documents/my.pdf

The interface should be very straightforward. Use the file selector in the top left corner to pick the PDF file to rip. Several ripping and converting options can be selected to control the final output.

The default values may be suitable, but most people will want to adjust the output to suit their requirements. For example, the quality setting for a JPEG may be turned down to reduce file size and the smoothing turned up to compensate for the reduction in image quality.

Of note, PNG images can be made transparent by picking a colour in the selector box which corresponds closely to the colour of the image to be made transparent. Experiment with this setting for the best effects.

Finally, click on the "Rip It" button to extract the images. Please be patient while the program does its work. It will create a new directory for the extracted files, so please make sure you have write permissions in the directory you are ripping from.

What's New in This Release:
The program provides a convenient front end to "pdfimages" from Xpdf and "pnmto*" from netpbm.