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Need a program to convert PDFs to image PDFs


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I need a program that given a PDF, converts it to another PDF where each each page is an image showing the contents of the original PDF.

Is there such a program ?

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And why would you want to do such a thing, such a pdf would be much larger and less quality and not possible to edit, etc.

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And why would you want to do such a thing, such a pdf would be much larger and less quality and not possible to edit, etc.

Making it faster to load. Some PDFs load\navigate VERY slowly on tablets like the iPad. It has nothing to do with the reader (tried Apple's default and Good Reader). Its something with certain PDFs I am not sure what it is exactly.

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I don't know if this exists but it would dramatically increase file size depending on what sort of DPI you wanted. It would also take up much more RAM, so it's debatable as to whether this would be any faster IMO.

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I don't know if this exists but it would dramatically increase file size depending on what sort of DPI you wanted. It would also take up much more RAM, so it's debatable as to whether this would be any faster IMO.

it would be just fine. I have a program which converts djvu files to image pdfs, and files > 100 mb load and navigate perfectly fast, but some 15 mb PDFs are insanly annoying and slow to navigate to the next page.

I found programs which print to image, but that would make the entire PDF be a single image. What I want is each pae contains one image.

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"reader (tried Apple's default and Good Reader)"

And what about the actual Adobe reader?

I just don't know why anyone would write an application to do such a thing to be honest. You could do it on your own, print your pdf to single image per page. Not sure where you found something that printed a pdf to just 1 image? Everyone I have ever seen prints each page to its own image. Then print those images back to a pdf.

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Making it faster to load. Some PDFs load\navigate VERY slowly on tablets like the iPad. It has nothing to do with the reader (tried Apple's default and Good Reader). Its something with certain PDFs I am not sure what it is exactly.

I make PDF's all the time at work that need to be on the iPad, a ton of them, and if they are based off of documents that once contained layers, such as a Photoshop or Illustrator file, that makes them load in a whole lot slower, as Acrobat actually retains those layers in a decent amount of situations. Flattening any and all images down to one layer helps it a lot. Also just images in general slow it down a ton. A background template image combined with other images on the page, again, layers, and as you noticed, the iPad just does not dig them. So if you can flatten them as much as possible and if you can leave the text as live text.

I have had to experiment with various different export settings, and once I finally reached one I liked in Acrobat, I just saved its profile.

Hope this helps a little.

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"reader (tried Apple's default and Good Reader)"

And what about the actual Adobe reader?

I just don't know why anyone would write an application to do such a thing to be honest. You could do it on your own, print your pdf to single image per page. Not sure where you found something that printed a pdf to just 1 image? Everyone I have ever seen prints each page to its own image. Then print those images back to a pdf.

I didn't know there existed Adobe Reader for the iPad ! Btw I think using one reader (Good Reader) for everything makes it easier to organize the documents. I am not sure, I tried one once some months ago and it printed it all in 1 page. Will check if there are other ones which print on separate pages. If so, then am sure someone must have made a program which generates PDF from images, or it shouldn't be so difficult to make.

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I make PDF's all the time at work that need to be on the iPad, a ton of them, and if they are based off of documents that once contained layers, such as a Photoshop or Illustrator file, that makes them load in a whole lot slower, as Acrobat actually retains those layers in a decent amount of situations. Flattening any and all images down to one layer helps it a lot. Also just images in general slow it down a ton. A background template image combined with other images on the page, again, layers, and as you noticed, the iPad just does not dig them. So if you can flatten them as much as possible and if you can leave the text as live text.

I have had to experiment with various different export settings, and once I finally reached one I liked in Acrobat, I just saved its profile.

Hope this helps a little.

yup I think it could be the layers. The PDFs are scanned and have a text layer on top of an image layer. I don't know how to remove\flatten those layers from the PDFs.

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As others said, the file size would be large.. so instead of waiting for the PDF to render, you are just going to spend time waiting for the image file to down(load).

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As others said, the file size would be large.. so instead of waiting for the PDF to render, you are just going to spend time waiting for the image file to down(load).

:/

As I replied, I have image PDF files > 100 mb and no problems at all loading them. It is only PDFs with text layers or something else which load/navigate very slowly.

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I didn't know there existed Adobe Reader for the iPad

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/adobe-reader/id469337564?mt=8

generates PDF from images, or it shouldn't be so difficult to make

Yeah any PDF printer would do that. What I have never seen is a tool that takes a pdf as input, and creates pdf as output with pages converted to images. The market for this has got to be like 0!! Who would want to do this other than you??

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http://itunes.apple....d469337564?mt=8

Yeah any PDF printer would do that. What I have never seen is a tool that takes a pdf as input, and creates pdf as output with pages converted to images. The market for this has got to be like 0!! Who would want to do this other than you??

I am experimenting with some PDF printers now. Would take some time till getting an output (PDFs with problems are > 200 pages typically).

I can imagine there would be a good market for such apps tho. PDFs with images would take constant time per page to render/print on any device, no need to worry about any rendering issues, missing fonts, etc.

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Ok -- I use pdfcreator, and if you go to properties and say print to image.. This sure seems to be what you want. It makes the pdf non searchable, and 5x the size in my 14 page pdf I tested with. But I think this is what your looking for

post-14624-0-26675900-1341065020_thumb.p

So just print your pdf to pdf again.

Here is my test.pdf of the esxi getting started guide and the original guide if you want to see if this is what you want.

test.pdf

5.0_U1_Mar_2012_ESXi_Getting_Started_Guide_616896-006.pdf

The flaw in your logic, is the is not going to be as good since its a picture not actual rendering of the fonts. You can not search the text, because its not text. You can not have bookmarks to specific text, its just a picture of the page, etc. Really defeats the whole feature set of pdf.

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Ok -- I use pdfcreator, and if you go to properties and say print to image.. This sure seems to be what you want. It makes the pdf non searchable, and 5x the size in my 14 page pdf I tested with. But I think this is what your looking for

post-14624-0-26675900-1341065020_thumb.p

So just print your pdf to pdf again.

Here is my test.pdf of the esxi getting started guide and the original guide if you want to see if this is what you want.

test.pdf

5.0_U1_Mar_2012_ESXi_Getting_Started_Guide_616896-006.pdf

The flaw in your logic, is the is not going to be as good since its a picture not actual rendering of the fonts. You can not search the text, because its not text. You can not have bookmarks to specific text, its just a picture of the page, etc. Really defeats the whole feature set of pdf.

Thanks a lot. Downloading and will try pdfcreator now.

You are totally right, ASSUMING you do not find it incredibly annoying to wait for 5-10 seconds for each and every single page to load in a document you want to read fast/navigate fast till you find something interesting.

It is a matter of trade off. I can not get all PDF features AND fast loading in the same time, so I made my choice that what I need most is fast page loading. If I need both then I would just open it on my PC. The rendering should be okay to read (as far as I can tell from djvu converted PDFs), and I can still bookmarks parts I want using the reader bookmarking tool.

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