In python code, how to efficiently save a certain page in a pdf as a jpeg file? (Use case: I’ve a python flask web server where pdf-s will be uploaded and jpeg-s corresponding to each page is stores.)

This solution is close, but the problem is that it does not convert the entire page to jpeg.

The pdf2image library can be used.

You can install it simply using,

pip install pdf2image

Once installed you can use following code to get images.

from pdf2image import convert_from_path
pages = convert_from_path('pdf_file', 500)

Saving pages in jpeg format

for page in pages:
    page.save('out.jpg', 'JPEG')

Edit: the Github repo pdf2image also mentions that it uses pdftoppm and that it requires other installations:

pdftoppm is the piece of software that does the actual magic. It is distributed as part of a greater package called poppler. Windows users will have to install poppler for Windows. Mac users will have to install poppler for Mac. Linux users will have pdftoppm pre-installed with the distro (Tested on Ubuntu and Archlinux) if it’s not, run sudo apt install poppler-utils.

You can install the latest version under Windows using anaconda by doing:

conda install -c conda-forge poppler

note: Windows versions upto 0.67 are available at http://blog.alivate.com.au/poppler-windows/ but note that 0.68 was released in Aug 2018 so you’ll not be getting the latest features or bug fixes.

I found this simple solution, PyMuPDF, output to png file. Note the library is imported as “fitz”, a historical name for the rendering engine it uses.

import fitz

pdffile = "infile.pdf"
doc = fitz.open(pdffile)
page = doc.loadPage(0)  # number of page
pix = page.getPixmap()
output = "outfile.png"
pix.writePNG(output)

The Python library pdf2image (used in the other answer) in fact doesn’t do much more than just launching pdttoppm with subprocess.Popen, so here is a short version doing it directly:

PDFTOPPMPATH = r"D:\Documents\software\____PORTABLE\poppler-0.51\bin\pdftoppm.exe"
PDFFILE = "SKM_28718052212190.pdf"

import subprocess
subprocess.Popen('"%s" -png "%s" out' % (PDFTOPPMPATH, PDFFILE))

Here is the Windows installation link for pdftoppm (contained in a package named poppler): http://blog.alivate.com.au/poppler-windows/

There is no need to install Poppler on your OS. This will work:

pip install Wand

from wand.image import Image

f = "somefile.pdf"
with(Image(filename=f, resolution=120)) as source: 
    for i, image in enumerate(source.sequence):
        newfilename = f[:-4] + str(i + 1) + '.jpeg'
        Image(image).save(filename=newfilename)

@gaurwraith, install poppler for Windows and use pdftoppm.exe as follows:

1. Download zip file with Poppler’s latest binaries/dlls from http://blog.alivate.com.au/poppler-windows/ and unzip to a new folder in your program files folder. For example: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Poppler”.

2. Add “C:\Program Files (x86)\Poppler\poppler-0.68.0\bin” to your SYSTEM PATH environment variable.

3. From cmd line install pdf2image module -> “pip install pdf2image”.

4. Or alternatively, directly execute pdftoppm.exe from your code using Python’s subprocess module as explained by user Basj.

@vishvAs vAsuki, this code should generate the jpgs you want through the subprocess module for all pages of one or more pdfs in a given folder:

import os, subprocess

pdf_dir = r"C:\yourPDFfolder"
os.chdir(pdf_dir)

pdftoppm_path = r"C:\Program Files (x86)\Poppler\poppler-0.68.0\bin\pdftoppm.exe"

for pdf_file in os.listdir(pdf_dir):

    if pdf_file.endswith(".pdf"):

        subprocess.Popen('"%s" -jpeg %s out' % (pdftoppm_path, pdf_file))

Or using the pdf2image module:

import os
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

pdf_dir = r"C:\yourPDFfolder"
os.chdir(pdf_dir)

    for pdf_file in os.listdir(pdf_dir):

        if pdf_file.endswith(".pdf"):

            pages = convert_from_path(pdf_file, 300)
            pdf_file = pdf_file[:-4]

            for page in pages:

               page.save("%s-page%d.jpg" % (pdf_file,pages.index(page)), "JPEG")

Their is a utility called pdftojpg which can be used to convert the pdf to img

You can found the code here https://github.com/pankajr141/pdf2jpg

from pdf2jpg import pdf2jpg
inputpath = r"D:\inputdir\pdf1.pdf"
outputpath = r"D:\outputdir"
# To convert single page
result = pdf2jpg.convert_pdf2jpg(inputpath, outputpath, pages="1")
print(result)

# To convert multiple pages
result = pdf2jpg.convert_pdf2jpg(inputpath, outputpath, pages="1,0,3")
print(result)

# to convert all pages
result = pdf2jpg.convert_pdf2jpg(inputpath, outputpath, pages="ALL")
print(result)

GhostScript performs much faster than Poppler for a Linux based system.

Following is the code for pdf to image conversion.

def get_image_page(pdf_file, out_file, page_num):
    page = str(page_num + 1)
    command = ["gs", "-q", "-dNOPAUSE", "-dBATCH", "-sDEVICE=png16m", "-r" + str(RESOLUTION), "-dPDFFitPage",
               "-sOutputFile=" + out_file, "-dFirstPage=" + page, "-dLastPage=" + page,
               pdf_file]
    f_null = open(os.devnull, 'w')
    subprocess.call(command, stdout=f_null, stderr=subprocess.STDOUT)

GhostScript can be installed on macOS using brew install ghostscript

Installation information for other platforms can be found here. If it is not already installed on your system.

I use a (maybe) much simpler option of pdf2image:

cd $dir
for f in *.pdf
do
  if [ -f "${f}" ]; then
    n=$(echo "$f" | cut -f1 -d'.')
    pdftoppm -scale-to 1440 -png $f $conv/$n
    rm $f
    mv  $conv/*.png $dir
  fi
done

This is a small part of a bash script in a loop for the use of a narrow casting device. Checks every 5 seconds on added pdf files (all) and processes them. This is for a demo device, at the end converting will be done at a remote server. Converting to .PNG now, but .JPG is possible too.

This converting, together with transitions on A4 format, displaying a video, two smooth scrolling texts and a logo (with transition in three versions) sets the Pi3 to allmost 4x 100% cpu-load ;-)

from pdf2image import convert_from_path
import glob

pdf_dir = glob.glob(r'G:\personal\pdf\*')  #your pdf folder path
img_dir = "G:\\personal\\img\\"           #your dest img path

for pdf_ in pdf_dir:
    pages = convert_from_path(pdf_, 500)
    for page in pages:
        page.save(img_dir+pdf_.split("\\")[-1][:-3]+"jpg", 'JPEG')

Here is a solution which requires no additional libraries and is very fast. This was found from: https://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200712/extracting_jpgs_from_pdfs.html# I have added the code in a function to make it more convenient.

def convert(filepath):
    with open(filepath, "rb") as file:
        pdf = file.read()

    startmark = b"\xff\xd8"
    startfix = 0
    endmark = b"\xff\xd9"
    endfix = 2
    i = 0

    njpg = 0
    while True:
        istream = pdf.find(b"stream", i)
        if istream < 0:
            break
        istart = pdf.find(startmark, istream, istream + 20)
        if istart < 0:
            i = istream + 20
            continue
        iend = pdf.find(b"endstream", istart)
        if iend < 0:
            raise Exception("Didn't find end of stream!")
        iend = pdf.find(endmark, iend - 20)
        if iend < 0:
            raise Exception("Didn't find end of JPG!")

        istart += startfix
        iend += endfix
        jpg = pdf[istart:iend]
        newfile = "{}jpg".format(filepath[:-3])
        with open(newfile, "wb") as jpgfile:
            jpgfile.write(jpg)

        njpg += 1
        i = iend

        return newfile

Call convert with the pdf path as the argument and the function will create a .jpg file in the same directory