Extracting images from a PDF

krishna

I have a PDF that I need to extract images from. If I use Acrobat, the quality of the image is poor since it seems to copy at screen resolution. I had done one or two previously using a trial version of Illustrator and that worked really well. However, I the trial has expired. Is there any way of extracting an image from a PDF in its original resolution?

ABH_3

krishna wrote:

I have a PDF that I need to extract images from. If I use Acrobat, the quality of the image is poor since it seems to copy at screen resolution. I had done one or two previously using a trial version of Illustrator and that worked really well. However, I the trial has expired. Is there any way of extracting an image from a PDF in its original resolution?

Is this any good: http://www.rlvision.com/pdfwiz/about.asp Alternatively, have you tried the 'PrnScrn' key on your keyboard, addmittedly its a slow way of doing things, but at least you will ne able to capture the resolution that you see the image as on the screen. Once the image is in the clipboard just open whatever program you want to port the image too, choose Paste and it shall appear.

HTH

skiddy2k

i normaly use adobe to copy pics (tools>basic>snapshot tools)... select the area you want to copy and it'l copy it for you... then paste it into MSword or paint... does the job for me... i supose another option is to use "print screen", but that'l more likley loose more quality.
not sure about other ways of copying the pictures

Bob63

http://www.pdfill.com/pdf_tools_free.html

PDFill free tools will do exactly what you want. I use the tool frequently.

Mike

krishna

None of these options seems to do any better than Adobe Acrobat for extracting the images. Strange, for some reason Illustrator managed to extract images of a much higher resolution. Anyway, just about managed with the resolution I did get by viewing the image as large as possible and copying in Acrobat using the snapshot tool.

ScoobieGirl

You could import the page into Photoshop then crop it. That should give a good result. Alternatively Enfocus do an excellent piece of software called PitStop which should enable you cut & paste the image. It will also tell you the resolution of the image in the source pdf

http://www.enfocus.com/product.php?id=855

Sadly it's not cheap bit they do give a 30 day free trial.

masonic

krishna wrote:

the quality of the image is poor since it seems to copy at screen resolution

Did you zoom in so the image is as big as possible on screen before copying? I came across the same issue myself and I think that's how I solved it.

krishna

masonic wrote:

Did you zoom in so the image is as big as possible on screen before copying? I came across the same issue myself and I think that's how I solved it.

That's exactly what I did. I even closed all the toolbars and menu bar, etc to maximise area. But it still only gave an image with a printable (300dpi) resolution of around 7cm. Fortunately that was just about all we needed.

scoobiegirl wrote:

You could import the page into Photoshop then crop it. That should give a good result. Alternatively Enfocus do an excellent piece of software called PitStop which should enable you cut & paste the image. It will also tell you the resolution of the image in the source pdf

Enfocus sounds interesting. Might give that a try next time. As for Photoshop. We only have 4.0 LE which came free with our version of PageMaker. Doesn't seem to let you import pages from a PDF. That's why I had to crop the image out and then pasted it into Photoshop. No help on resolution though.

Thanks for all the help.

primeramikey

It could be that the pdf has been generated to be LOW res, we do this at work for a proof that needs sending via email. just so that the client can glance over it and just check the copy.. email quality say 600k as oppsoed to print (high res) 4mb..

Also if ya wanna open the pdf in photoshop ya should just be able to do a File--- Open and browse for the pdf and it should ask you what dpi ya want to rasterise it.. choose 300 dpi, but it still wont give ya the native quality of the image if the pdf has been generated at low res but would be better than taking a screen shot..

I personaly use the full version of acrobat, choose the advanced editing feature and then choose touch up image tool, then right click the image and choose EDIT which allows to open the image in photoshop and save where you like. or ya could also in the full version choose to export all images as tiff and this is under the advanced menu. but only in the full version not Reader...

masonic

krishna wrote:

That's exactly what I did. I even closed all the toolbars and menu bar, etc to maximise area. But it still only gave an image with a printable (300dpi) resolution of around 7cm. Fortunately that was just about all we needed.

So the original resolution of the image in the pdf was more than 300 dpi? Images in standard pdf files are downsampled to 150 dpi before further compression. If the pdf image really is that hi-res, a cheap and nasty way of improving the copied resolution would be to zoom in even further, copy it in sections and reassemble in your paint program.

krishna

primeramikey wrote:

It could be that the pdf has been generated to be LOW res, ....

Also if ya wanna open the pdf in photoshop ya should just be able to do a File--- Open ...

I personaly use the full version of acrobat, choose the advanced editing feature and then choose touch up image tool, then right click the image and choose EDIT which allows to open the image in photoshop and save where you like. or ya could also in the full version choose to export all images as tiff and this is under the advanced menu. but only in the full version not Reader...

PDF was in higher res than I was able to copy before. Tried Opening PDF in Photoshop, but 4.0LE doesn't allow me to do that. Perhaps it was created in a more recent version of Acrobat. Thanks for the guidance on Acrobat, though. I had been trying to extract it that way but couldn't. Don't seem to have an option in Acrobat Pro 6 to touch up image, but did find I was able to select image and then copy and paste into Photoshop. That worked really well!

Thanks!