PDF Tiles to Images?

[scottaroberts]

Many of the sites I have seen offer dungeon tiles (yay!) Some of them, however, seem to think that PDF is a great format for them (wha?). What I don't know is, how do I get the images out of the PDFs to use them in (say) Gimp or Paint to make maps?

I assume you *can* simply link them together in Gimp if you want. Unless there's a better program for moving map tiles around. That would be awesome, especially if it's open-source or otherwise freely available.

[Nickademus]

https://www.gonitro.com/pdf-reader

[Andraax]

Gimp reads PDF files.

[damned]

my favourite tool for using tiles is Tiled.
https://www.mapeditor.org/


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[Diceman]

Gimp reads PDF files.

New to FG's. I've heard of Gimp before but not quite sure what it is, where to acquire it, or how to use it. I am making the assumption it is a mapping program.

[dulux-oz]

I'm quite partial to paint.net - its free, relatively easy to learn (give or take) and does just about all I need.

Google it and you'll be able to download it

Cheers

[damned]

New to FG's. I've heard of Gimp before but not quite sure what it is, where to acquire it, or how to use it. I am making the assumption it is a mapping program.

www.gimp.org
It is a freeware, open source alternative to Photoshop.
It is a very powerful graphics application.


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[Zacchaeus]

Dulux

√(-1) 2^3 Σ Π
...And it was Delicious!

I get all of this except why is the square root of -1 = i?

[Trenloe]

I get all of this except why is the square root of -1 = i?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit

[ColinBuckler]

I use a program called pdfimages.exe - its a free download from https://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

Its a batch command but it will look at a PDF and rip out all images for you.

I then resize the images using XNConvert which is also fee and available from https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/

[seycyrus]

I use a program called pdfimages.exe - its a free download from https://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
...

I'm sorry, but is there help available for dummies?

I've unzipped the download, placed it in Program Files folder. Now, I'm supposed to open up "sample-xpdfrc", make some changes and save it to ??

[dulux-oz]

Dulux

√(-1) 2^3 Σ Π
...And it was Delicious!

I get all of this except why is the square root of -1 = i?


As Tren said: its a fundamental mathematical rule.

(And the quote just proves what a (mathematical) Alpha-Geek I truly am :p )

Cheers

[dulux-oz]

I use a program called pdfimages.exe - its a free download from https://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

Its a batch command but it will look at a PDF and rip out all images for you.

I then resize the images using XNConvert which is also fee and available from https://www.xnview.com/en/xnconvert/

I also use both these programs and can recommend them.

Cheers

[Diceman]

www.gimp.org
It is a freeware, open source alternative to Photoshop.
It is a very powerful graphics application.


https://www.fg-con.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/fg-con-6-150-7.jpg (https://www.fg-con.com/events/)
FG Con 6 – April 17-19th 2015 - register at www.fg-con.com (https://www.fg-con.com/) for all the latest info.

Thank you and everyone else for the reply. I'm in the process of converting my old 2E home brewed campaign for 5E. Then I will need to convert it to FG once I get all of the necessary modules.

[seycyrus]

I also use both these programs and can recommend them.

Cheers

Do you use them on a windows machine?

[ColinBuckler]

I'm sorry, but is there help available for dummies?

I've unzipped the download, placed it in Program Files folder. Now, I'm supposed to open up "sample-xpdfrc", make some changes and save it to ??

The way I do it is:

(1) create a new folder e.g. "C:\PDFimages". also create another folder in the newly created "C:\PDFimages" called "images"
(2) download ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdfbin-win-3.04.zip
(3) extract pdfimages.exe from the zip file and copy it to "C:\PDFimages". You may find the other programs usefull - but we do not need them for this exercise.
(4) create a file in "C:\PDFimages" called "run.bat" containing the command "pdfimages.exe -j z.pdf images"

Whenever you want to extract all images from a PDF, copy the PDF into "C:\PDFimages" and rename it to be "z.pdf". Next double click the "run.bat" file which will execute the program extracting all images to the "C:\PDFimages\images" folder.

You can then use the XNconvert to resize/rotate as required.

One thing though, watch changing file formats due to the transparency level in the images. It maybe best to stick with PNG files.

Hope this helps....

[Zacchaeus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_unit

Ah, thank you Trenloe.

[seycyrus]

The way I do it is:...


Thank you, that helped a lot. I was a bit confused about whether or not I had to do an additional install. I was able to run pdfimages from a command line.

I have an additional question, that you might be able to help with.

I ran pdfimages -j on a pdf file and I get a mixture of .jpg and ppm files.

The jpgs are negatives of the original black and white images.

Any idea why, and if I have any options to change the contrast scheme back to the original?

Again, thanks for your help!

[ColinBuckler]

No problem - not sure about the negetive jpg files. What about the PPM files - do they contain the images you need? Paint.Net / Gimp should be able to open the ppm files if you are having problems.

I have noticed that pdf's behave differently - I think its to do with they way they are put together by the publisher.

[seycyrus]

Gimp will invert the negative images for me, still strange why it happened on this pdf. - Frandor's Keep (legally purchased pdf). The color images seem to be unaffected.

Now that I look at the ppm files, I am uncertain why they were pulled out. They open with libreDraw by default and each seems to be an icon for a link to the table of contents, which I don't need. I guess the icon is an image.

[sukEEt]

Gimp 2.8!!!

[Lothlos]

Thanks to the contributors to this thread. I use Irfanview for batch conversions and renames and some light editing.

https://www.irfanview.com/