PDF imaging

Background: see {{spin-systems/flow : : Literature-imaging}}

🐣 eidetic 1

• Rendering PDF to image is easy (scraping can wait: imaging first and foremost!)

Solutions

• from first thread I read, considering 'sejda console', has pdftojpeg function (but needs Java)
  • imagemagick can do this too

imagemagick readings

• 1 gs handles the processing of PDFs for imagemagick

  ImageMagick loads the entire pdf into the memory before process it. On the other hand ghostscript has the capability of processing 1 page at time which reduces the load on hardware by a lot. Here is a great article about that i used as a reference in this testing.

  • NB code has source to try it out, gs benchmarks [on 8GB RAM] ~3-4x faster than convert

• 2 Stack Overflow: Convert PDF to image with high resolution

  However, it would be harder to do your trimming and sharpening using gs, so, …, YMMV [Your Mileage May Vary]!

• 3 complaints on conversion quality

• 4 CLI example

• 5 more tips via S.O

• 6 more tips if needed via AskUbuntu

• 7 + note on batch

• 8 nice visual explanation of flags etc

"Best current tools for working with PDF files in Python?"

2015 thread

• Furthermore...
  • top answer is some Windows/Java tool...
  • told do not use Reportlab to just read PDFs