:date: 2011-10-26 10:03

.. index:: tech, pdf. code

Image Fetching from PDF
=======================

.. image:: /_images/images/gallery/icons/pdf_icon.png
   :align: center
   :scale: 50

Usually I extract pictures from PDF documents by using Gimp: Whenever you open a PDF document, it's asking you which pages it shall open. Basically all pages are opened as a graphic, so you can cut out all the graphics you want. But: Isn't there a faster way to do this?

Yes, there is. The almighty command line provides you with a tool called `pdfimages <http://linux.die.net/man/1/pdfimages>`__ which focuses exactly on that purpose.

Instead using gimp I used

.. code:: bash

   $ pdfimages -j -f 148 -l 148 file.pdf image

and extracted the graphics from page :kbd:`148 (-f)` to page :kbd:`148 (-l)` as *jpg* (-j) from :file:`file.pdf` and all images were named :file:`image-00*.jpg`. `pdfimages <http://linux.die.net/man/1/pdfimages>`__ just has seven parameter, so it's pretty easy to learn. For those GUI-Lovers you can just put it `into a script <http://www.boekhoff.info/?pid=linux&tip=extract-images-from-pdf-files>`__ and run it via mouse-click then (but that kills all the fun, I think).