pdf file to bitmaps
Hello there,
I would like to know how I could convert a pdf document into
a bitmap. Some code would be usefull though I would imagine that it would be long and complex. A reference/link to such a converter would be ideal,
Thanks,
Steve M:confused:
[278 byte] By [
smatthews] at [2007-11-17 22:37:35]
# 1 Re: pdf file to bitmaps
It's a hard problem indeed. There are some COM interfaces for Acrobat Reader, although I haven't used them yet. Check around on the Acrobat site for the documentation about this.
If you want to go with something else, you can try to use ghostscript. It handles pdf files as well.
P.S. Try and use a more descriptive thread title ;) "Bitmaps" is a bit more general than your question :)
# 2 Re: pdf file to bitmaps
If you want create some code for processing the pdf and convert it to bmp's i wish you good luck because you could really get mad.
You can search the adobe home page and download the adobe pdf reference manual. Its a 600 page of hard and compact information about the structure of a PDF. Some PDF writing engine (PDFWriter, Distiller...) could be helpfull for creating simple PDF structures for opening them with any text editor and see the internal PDF structures.
There are more problems. PDF has various methods of compresion, (ZIP, LZW, Discrete cosine transform, ASCII85, ...) LZW for example is an algorithm with patent from UNISYS, (is the algorithm used by GIF, in theory any internet developer can put gif images in his web pages without permision of UNISYS). But all of them are of public domine, including LZW.
And finaly PDF has lots of structures and things that can make a "PDF reader" a pharaonic task.
There is somewhere an Acrobat Reader ActiveX and I heard (because i never used it) you can open pdf files with it. You can search google.
If you only want to conver it with the aid of some program, Adobe Photoshop can open PDF. I used the 5.0 version and you can only open PDF created with Adobe Photoshop(I don`t know the difference with other PDF), but maybe the 6.0 or 7.0 version can open any PDF.
You can also make some tricks installing a Post Script compatible printer and print the PDF from Acrobat reader and then convert the .ps or .eps created to .bmp with some graphics program (adobe photoshop,corel...)
