How to fix my PDFs ?
August 8, 2009 7:01 PM Subscribe
How to adjust brightness/contrast in PDF files?
I have several PDF files which were created by scanning some material containing text, but some of them came up with unnecessarily dark backgrounds, that is, with borked contrast. If I print them, they will waste too much ink, and the printouts will be harder to read. I know that there's a program that allows the brightness/contrast to be adjusted, but I have forgotten its name, though I spent 3 hours downloading various programs with no luck. :(
So what I want to do ideally is to simply select the page numbers (that are over 100 pages, by the way) and do a batch adjustment of whatever is needed.
Do you know a program that could help?
I have several PDF files which were created by scanning some material containing text, but some of them came up with unnecessarily dark backgrounds, that is, with borked contrast. If I print them, they will waste too much ink, and the printouts will be harder to read. I know that there's a program that allows the brightness/contrast to be adjusted, but I have forgotten its name, though I spent 3 hours downloading various programs with no luck. :(
So what I want to do ideally is to simply select the page numbers (that are over 100 pages, by the way) and do a batch adjustment of whatever is needed.
Do you know a program that could help?
Response by poster: Yes, except that I am using Windows XP. :(
posted by GrooveStix at 7:56 PM on August 8, 2009
posted by GrooveStix at 7:56 PM on August 8, 2009
Have you tried to the demo of Acrobat (not reader?) They have a 30 day trial.
posted by bigmusic at 5:09 AM on August 9, 2009
posted by bigmusic at 5:09 AM on August 9, 2009
Response by poster: Yes I have, and unfortunately there's nothing that allows me to change the brightness/contrast. I just realized that I have Macs at work, so if anyone knows a solution that involves Macs go ahead and say it. I'll try the one that scalefree suggested, even though it is very vague.
posted by GrooveStix at 10:07 AM on August 9, 2009
posted by GrooveStix at 10:07 AM on August 9, 2009
If you're running OSX, you can probably get ImageMagick, which is one of the canonical ways to manipulate images on *nix. Together with Ghostscript, you can manipulate PDFs with the command line
Finally, I found this which tells you (in theory) how to manipulate brightness and contrast (using
posted by stufflebean at 10:40 AM on August 9, 2009
convert tool.Finally, I found this which tells you (in theory) how to manipulate brightness and contrast (using
convert). Just substitute the .png used in the instructions with your .pdf.posted by stufflebean at 10:40 AM on August 9, 2009
Sorry, I missed that your native platform is Windows XP. That being said, I know you can get distributions of ImageMagick and Ghostscript for Windows, so perhaps the same approach is valid.
posted by stufflebean at 10:42 AM on August 9, 2009
posted by stufflebean at 10:42 AM on August 9, 2009
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by scalefree at 7:49 PM on August 8, 2009