Re: PDFs to images

[Daniel Kasak <dkasak nusconsulting com au>]

On Thu, 2007-10-11 at 19:27 +0300, Juhana Sadeharju wrote:

> Hello. Here is a feature suggestion:
> Given hundreds of PDF files, render them to image files.

Use the 'convert' program, from imagemagick eg:

cd /folder/with/pdfs
for I in *.pdf
do
  convert $I $I.png
done

> Many times I find the pdf viewer too slow. E.g., the file
> has drawings or images which draws or uncompress slowly.

PDFs aren't images. As you have discovered, things need to be rendered,
and this can take time. The above script will convert your PDFs to PNGs.
They'll be a fixed size ( height / width ), and you'll loose quality,
but it will work.

> For how fast the generated images are read, check
> the photosynth demo here:
>   http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129
> While photosynth is new tech, the idea of reading the docs
> with similar image paging tech has been in my list for years.

Sure. Evince is a PDF viewer. To be fair, you can only compare it to
other PDF viewers. I don't compare my car to my fridge, but both have
air conditioning.

--
Daniel Kasak
IT Developer
NUS Consulting Group
Level 5, 77 Pacific Highway
North Sydney, NSW, Australia 2060
T: (+61) 2 9922-7676 / F: (+61) 2 9922 7989
email: dkasak nusconsulting com au
website: http://www.nusconsulting.com.au