Convert PDF to image

Question

I'm trying to convert a PDF file (it's a book) into an image.

When I using convert like this

convert book.pdf book.jpg

or like this

convert book.pdf book.png

then I get this warning

Warning: Short look-up table in the Indexed color space was padded with 0's

for each page.

Is there some other tool I can use for conversion to get a bunch of images for this, or can someone show me a different way to solve this problem?

Solution 1

One different way would be GhostScript:

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=jpeg -r96 -sOutputFile='page-%00d.jpg' input.pdf

where -r96 is desired dpi resolution

Output are multiple JPEG images.

You can generate transparent PNGs also if you wish:

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pngalpha -r96 -sOutputFile='page-%00d.png' input.pdf

Solution 2

convert -geometry 1600x1600 -density 200x200 -quality 100 file.pdf file.jpg

When converting to jpg, you can use the -quality option. The "best" quality would be -quality 100.

There is a much simpler way to split multipage pdfs into a jpg:

convert -quality 100 -density 600x600 multipage.pdf single%d.jpg

    The -density option defines the quality the pdf is rendered before the convert > here 600dpi. For high quality prints you can increase that number.
    The %d just before the jpg suffix is for automatic numbering of the output pages 0,1,2...
    The -quality option defines the compression quality of the output jpg (0 min ... 100 max)
    The .jpg suffix defines the output format. You could use .png/.jpg/.pdf

Comments

[Sabacon]

Very good method

[TheHippo]

+1 for not using imagemagick

[Rasoul]

How to make the background of the images white instead of transparent?

[zetah]

Don't use pngalptha device?

[Vivek Sancheti]

How to define width in this? Width needs to be defined and height needs to be auto based on aspect ratio.