PDF pluggin - creating multi-page

[dcakovan]

I just found this feature and I must say "Great!".
I have a ton of images (references) I do not use anymore and I wanted to somehow archive but be able to have an easy access to them (browsing) if I need to find something in the future. It is a pain to zip them because zip has no thumbnails and xnview is still buggy when it comes to browsing archive files. With PDF I can just open it and see what is in there with ease.
Is there a better way of archiving images than this (no zip, rar, etc)?

So... about PDF plug-in...
1. I have to set a zoom (in acrobat) to a 75% to view images at their native resolution. At 100% they are enlarged... Is there a fix for this?
2. Is there a way to extract image or images (option) from a PDF file?... if I might need an image from PDF for some reason.

Here is the sample of how it looks in pdf...

[Drahken]

1. I have to set a zoom (in acrobat) to a 75% to view images at their native resolution. At 100% they are enlarged... Is there a fix for this?

This is because PDF viewers show the image at print size, while normal image viewers show it at actual resolution. Open an image, click image->set DPI. The default setting for an image created on the computer is 72dpi (scanned images will usually be higher, generally between 150 and 300 dpi). The DPI is inversely proportional to the size it will display in acrobat. In other words, setting the DPI higher will make the image appear smaller when viewed in acrobat (it doesn't change the actual size of the image, just the size acrobat displays it in). Most likely, your image is currently at 72 DPI, setting it to 100 DPI will probably fix the problem. (If not, just experiment.)
*note: DPI changes have to be made to the original image, before you put it in the PDF.

2. Is there a way to extract image or images (option) from a PDF file?... if I might need an image from PDF for some reason.

That is the biggest flaw with putting images in PDF form, trying to extract them again. The full version of acrobat can do it and there are several shareware progs that can, but freeware solutions are few and far between (and most of those are a pain to use). Here are some discussions on extracting images from a PDF:
http://www.sketchyorigins.com/comics/sh ... php?t=6907
http://www.sketchyorigins.com/comics/sh ... php?t=3223
http://sketchyorigins.com/comics/showthread.php?t=8547
http://www.sketchyorigins.com/comics/sh ... php?t=5566
The best freeware extractor I've found is PDF Image Extraction Wizard (long name, ain't it?): http://www.rlvision.com/pdfwiz/about.asp It extracts all images from a given PDF to wherever you tell it.
(Also bear in mind that if you use the JPEG compression option for the PDF, it'll reduce the quality of your images. The packbits, zip, and LZW options however, are lossless.)

Your best bet for archiving images would be to put them in a rar or zip archive, then use PicWalker to browse them. Picwalker is expressly designed to view archived images, and has a fully functional thumbnail view. Screen-1 Screen-2 Screen-3

[Troken]

2. Is there a way to extract image or images (option) from a PDF file?... if I might need an image from PDF for some reason.

Alternatively, if you use Photoshop, you can just open your PDF and select the image you want to open. In the latest CS2 you get a thumbnail view of the PDFs all pages, and lets you pic the page you want to open.

[dcakovan]

Drahken,
thank you very much for the helpfull write-up. I never thought about DPI change. That makes sense.
Now, about PicWalker... this sounds great. I have been looking for something like this while back but was unable to find it. One problem I found is that virus scanners report this as suspicious Trojan/Worm, Dialer. I have downloaded several exe's from diferent mirrors and all checked out the same. Not sure if it is a program or its installer.

Troken,
I will try that at work. I have never thought of it. Thanks.

[Troken]

I am not sure it is the same as exctracting the image though. If its altered or not when opened, maybe someone else can answer.

[Drahken]

One problem with picwalker is that it hasn't been updated in a long time. If you got it from the oma-penny site, I can gurantee it's not a trojan/etc. I zipped up my installation of it and uploaded it here, if you want to try doing it that way (just unpack the archive, I don't think picwalker installs any files or anything).

Another viewer I discovered yesterday is GonVisor. I'm still tinkering around with it, but you can get thumbs of the images in an archive by opening the archive and clicking actions->show image previews (or by hitting F7). It can also extract images from a PDF (although you need the PDFtoHTML prog, which is a seperate download. The PDFtoHTML prog can also be used on it's own, if you drag a PDF onto it, it'll extract allthe images to the current folder.

[dcakovan]

Hey Drahken, thanks the for help.
This one you zipped up still shows up as trojan/worm on one of the scanners so I am not sure I want to try it. It might be a false-positive, I do not know. But, I have found this CDisplay program http://www.geocities.com/davidayton/CDisplay and it is a simple viewer only (ctrl+p shows thumbs), doesnot extract images to HD (not that I have seen) ... memory only? It is very simple but might be hard if there are a hundreds of images in the zip.
I think, in the end, I will be purchasing that Directory Opus explorer replacement program (for other reasons). Opus is also able to cache all thumbs in the zip file but have to extract them out to your local when viewing and keeps crating new directory for each picture (that is a pain) that you open. As I said CDisplay did not appear to do that.

[Drahken]

I can guarantee it's a false positive, but I can understand your reluctance. If picwalker hadn't been abandonded, you could email the author about it. You could still try contacting the makers of your antivirus software about it, but I doubt it'd do much good. Pretty much your only choices are to take a chance or not risk it.

Cdisplay is an excellent archive viewer, I didn't mention it before because I didn't think it could do thumbs. I use it all the time for reading comic book scans. Cdisplay views the images from directly within the archive (it might create files in your temp folder, but if it does, it deletes them afterwards). With most archives it simply extracts the image you're currently looking at (and a little ahead if you have it set to), and leaves the rest untouched. Some formats however (like tar) it has to open the entire archive. Needless to say, tar isn't a good format to use with it. You can export images from an archive to a file one at a time, just right click while viewing the image and you'll see an option to save image (you can save as file, or to clipboard). It can't read PDFs though.
Cdisplay's author vanished quite a while ago, so developement on the official version is dead until he reappears. However, there are 2 unofficial versions. One is a minor update that improves the interface and adds a couple features, but is still essentially cdisplay. Unfortunately, the site for it is currently offline ( http://cdisplay.net ). The other version adds a lot of features, but changes the prog fairly significantly. It can be found at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdisplayex/

For more such viewers and help with them, checkout this comics forum: http://sketchyorigins.com/comics/forumdisplay.php?f=61