Pdf to Jpeg conversion on a PC

September 19, 2005 10:32 AM

Pdf to Jpeg Conversion? Is it possible for free on a windows box? I have been trying for weeks! Please help so I can read a book I bought on my PSP

I have a PDF copy of the Shadowrun 4th edition manual that I would love to be able to take with me to work on my PSP. I've viewed comics before on my psp and they end up very readable. There is a free app on the mac to do this, but I am on a windows box and don't have access to a mac.
All the "free" trials I have tried in the last couple weeks produce watermarked jpegs that are no good for what I need.
At my wits end and burning myself out trying every method I can find to no avail. Free is best.. Really cheap is ok, but having just paid allmost 30 clams for the pdfs I rather not sink more cash into it, and itwould be a tough purchase to get past the budgetary committee.

posted by JonnyRotten to Computers & Internet (20 answers total)

Yes sort of..
You can either import it to Photoshop or Paintshop pro(??)
and resave it as jpeg

or download free screen capture program and capture it on screen.
posted by curiousleo at 10:43 AM on September 19, 2005

You can use the 30-day free trial of Zan Image Printer to print your PDF to JPG. The only limitation of this demo version is that you have to print in 15-page batches.
posted by rxrfrx at 10:45 AM on September 19, 2005

"Get a friend with Acrobat (not Reader) to save the file as JPG" counts as free, if you have a friend with the full version of Acrobat.
posted by solid-one-love at 10:54 AM on September 19, 2005

Open it with Acrobat Reader 7, then use the Snapshot Tool (the button looks like a camera with a dashed box around it) to select each page. That'll dump it to the clipboard as an image, then you paste that into something like Photoshop (or even Irfanview, I just tried it) and save the resulting as whatever image format you like.
posted by Dipsomaniac at 11:05 AM on September 19, 2005

Best answer: This is something where the open source Ghostscript really shines, especially for converting documents with lots of pages, where using Acrobat's snapshot tool can get very tedious.

Get the latest versions of Ghostscript and GSView from this page and install. Install Ghostscript first, then GSView. Open the .PDF in GSView, go to File->Convert and pick 'jpeg' from the list on the left. You can then select the resolution you want to export at (72 is probably what you want). Pick OK. Navigate to where you want the JPGs to go, and type in for the file name: shadowrun%03d.jpg. Pick Save and it'll start chewing through, creating shadowrun001.jpg, shadowrun002.jpg, shadowrun003.jpg, etc., for every page in the PDF.
posted by zsazsa at 11:17 AM on September 19, 2005

second Ghostscript and GSview. I use these for pdf conversion on a daily basis.
posted by cosmicbandito at 11:18 AM on September 19, 2005

You can do this with GSView and GhostScript (GSView is a front end for GhostScript, you need both). This is proper free software, no commercials, no watermarks. Install them both, then run GSView and open your PDF. Choose "convert" from the file menu and under "device" pick JPEG. You can choose what DPI you want to render the JPEG with.
posted by teleskiving at 11:20 AM on September 19, 2005

Well OK, count that as a thirding then!
posted by teleskiving at 11:20 AM on September 19, 2005

Response by poster: GSView is exactly it. But it gets a assertation error every time I load the pdf with it.
I just tested it on other PDFs and it does them up perfectly for what I want..
I want to cry
posted by JonnyRotten at 11:28 AM on September 19, 2005

Response by poster: Assertion failed!
Expressions: dec ->numcomps == 3
posted by JonnyRotten at 11:30 AM on September 19, 2005

I should have noticed, after doing this with a test PDF: the output generated by Ghostscript is not antialiased (jaggy). It may be best to output at 300+ dpi and resize them down to an appropriate size with your favorite batch image converter (like Irfanview, mentioned above). This will make the text smoother and more readable at low resolutions.

On preview: JonnyRotten: what happens if you ignore the error(s) and Convert anyway? GSView can be cantankerous when trying to load complex PDFs. Failing that, you can convert the PDF to a PostScript (.ps) file by setting up a color Postscript printer (like an Apple Color Laserwriter) and printing to file, then load the .ps into GSview...
posted by zsazsa at 11:36 AM on September 19, 2005

Response by poster: If I ignore it keeps coming up over and over.. If I retry it hard crashes.
How would I set up a virtual apple printer to print to file?
posted by JonnyRotten at 11:45 AM on September 19, 2005

Best answer: I found a PDF that gives this error. Hitting 'Ignore' several times seems to make things work. If that won't work, here's how to make the virtual printer: under Printers and Faxes, click Add a printer. Select 'Local printer...' and uncheck 'Automatically detect...' then Next. Pick 'FILE: (Print to File)' from 'Use the following port:', then Next. On the next page, pick Apple, Apple Color LW 12/660 PS (it should be first on the list). You can name the printer anything, but 'Postscript' is probably best. When you print to that printer, it'll pop up a box asking where to put the file. Unfortunately you usually don't get a nice box to select where the file goes, so put in something like C:\shadowrun.ps to make sure you can find it later. Open that file up in GSView and do the rest. Note that it may be pretty slow.

As a bonus, in the future you can now use this virtual Postscript printer and then convert anything else you can print to PDF with GSView using 'pdfwrite' instead of 'jpeg'!
posted by zsazsa at 12:09 PM on September 19, 2005

Could you put it up on the web somewhere obscure then Google it and 'view at html' over the PSP?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 12:55 PM on September 19, 2005

Response by poster: The convert to postscript seemed to fix it.. made a hella huge gig plus file out of it though.. Lol. but its getting it done nicely! and free!! Your my hero Zsazsa and everyone else.

The base pdf is 52 megs so viewing it over the internet wouldn't work too well, plus I haven't updated my firmware and don't have wipeout.
I tried (with no success) to convert it to a html file that would keep the basic column layout of it.. but for some reason everytime I tried to convert it with gscript and pdf2html it would come out with no spaces.. weird..
posted by JonnyRotten at 1:01 PM on September 19, 2005

If you can wait two more days, I will convert it for you on my Mac at work ( I am in the middle of moving). email me and we can set up the details. Dropload would probably work as a transfer method.

fwiw, I'm not going to keep the original. I don't even know what shadowrun is, and my SF tastes are fairly rarefied.
posted by mecran01 at 11:07 PM on September 19, 2005

Response by poster: I finally got it. Thank you though Mecran01!
I had to convert it to a Postscript file that was huge then load it into ghostscript.. I ended up losiong a page or two somewhere.. but all in all it works quite well as far as being able to read on the PSP
Thank you all!
posted by JonnyRotten at 5:10 AM on September 20, 2005

It sounds like you're looking for PDF 2 PSP.
posted by seanyboy at 1:08 AM on September 21, 2005

And now it's too late, and I can't email you about it because you don't have an email address in your profile, and you'll never know. Arghhhh.
posted by seanyboy at 1:09 AM on September 21, 2005

Oh. Ignore that. You already know about pdf2psp.
posted by seanyboy at 1:11 AM on September 21, 2005