Recently, I received a PDF file via email with lots of great images that I wanted to extract into separate JPEG files so I could upload them to my website. There are many ways to get images out of a PDF, and the best way really depends on the tools you have installed on your system.
In this article, I’m going to go through the six easiest ways I could find to capture image from PDF file. I’ll start with the most basic methods that don’t require any paid or third-party software and then show you how to do it in Adobe Acrobat Pro and Adobe Photoshop, if you have those installed. that software.
Table of Contents
Method 1 – Take a screenshot
The first method requires taking a screenshot of the image in the PDF file. Obviously, this method is only useful if you need to capture a small number of images from a PDF file.
You can use a third-party screenshot utility if you have it installed, or you can use the built-in widget Screen snipping tool in Windows 7 and higher or screenshot shortcuts in OS X. On both operating systems, you can only capture part of the screen using the operating system’s built-in features.
Method 2 – Free Online Tool
The next easiest method is to simply use a free online service that will decompress the images for you and allow you to download them individually or as a compressed archive. The only problem with online services is that they will have some restrictions on the size of the PDF file and the number of images the service will extract for free.
PDFaid.com It’s a terrible looking site, with ads stuffed into every free space on the site, but it does a great job of extracting high-quality images from PDFs.
Select your file, which can be up to 20 MB in size, choose the image format you prefer (JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP) and then click Extract images button. After a few seconds, you will see a pop-up dialog where you can click to download the ZIP file of all the images.
ExtractPDF.com is another good site that has a cleaner look and better presentation of results. After you select your PDF, which can only be 14 MB, you’ll see a list of all the images found along with a small thumbnail.
I like this because you can select images to download in case you don’t want to download all of them. This site only allows you to download images as PNG files, so you’ll have to convert them to another image format yourself.
Method 3 – Adobe Acrobat Reader
Another method that I’ve used that works well is to use the free Adobe Acrobat Reader program. First, go ahead and open your PDF and scroll down to where the image you want to capture is located.
Next, click Edit menu and select Let’s take a picture.
At this point you can simply click and drag your mouse over the area of the image to take a screenshot, but a better way is to click Edit menu again and select Select all.
Now right click on the image in the PDF file and you will see an option named Copy selected graphic.
The image will be copied to the clipboard and you can paste it into any image editing program to save it in your preferred format. I like to do the select and copy process because it just takes the image without any excess of the screen.
It should be noted that the first three methods require you to extract images individually, not in a series or all at once. The next three methods allow you to batch extract images.
Method 4 – Adobe Acrobat Pro
For those of you who have Adobe Acrobat Pro installed, it’s a lot easier to get all the images out of the PDF at once. To do this, open Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and open the desired PDF file. Next, click Tools and you’ll see a bunch of icons, but the one you want to click is Export PDF.
On the left, you’ll see a small thumbnail image of the first page of the PDF document, and on the right, you’ll see a bunch of options for exporting the file. Click Pictureclick on the file format you want and then check Export all images box.
Click Export and you will get another dialog where you have to choose the location for the exported image files. A default folder is selected, but you can change the location by clicking Choose another folder button.
When you click on the folder, Save as dialog will pop up and you have to give the image a name. The filename for each image will use whatever you enter as the base name, followed by the page number and image number, i.e. CatPics_Page_1_Image0001.jpg.
Method 5 – Adobe Photoshop
If you have Photoshop installed instead of Acrobat Pro, it’s also very easy to extract all the images. Open Photoshop and open the PDF as you would normally open an image file. The PDF import dialog will appear automatically.
Click the Image radio button and then select the image you want to open inside Photoshop. Use the SHIFT key to select multiple images. When you click OK, each image will be opened in a separate tab in Photoshop.
Method 6 – Freeware Programs
If you’re wondering why I haven’t mentioned any freeware programs, it’s because most of them have some kind of adware or spyware included with the installation process. However, since there’s really no other freeware method to batch extract images from a PDF other than the online method, I’ll mention a program I’ve used that works.
Extract several PDF images is freeware, but it’s a bit old. I ran the EXE file through VirusTotal and it came out perfectly clean, so that’s a good thing. The only problem is that it crashes sometimes and there doesn’t seem to be any way around that. Your mileage will vary.
Click File, Open and select your PDF document. You can actually select multiple files for real batch extraction of images. Click the little play button at the bottom and it will start the process. By default, it creates a folder on the desktop with the same name as the PDF file containing all the images.
So those are six different ways you can get images out of a PDF and hopefully one of them works for you. If not, post a comment and I’ll try to help. Interesting!
