pdftoppm(1)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so this is pdftoppm(1) from the General Commands Manual 🎀 bestie, it's the tool that turns PDFs into images 💖

pdftoppm - Portable Document Format (PDF) to Portable Pixmap (PPM) converter (version 3.03) 🦋

🧚 SYNOPSIS 🧚

pdftoppm [options] PDF-file PPM-root

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so pdftoppm converts PDF files into color images in PPM format 🌈 or grayscale images in PGM format 🩶, or monochrome images in PBM format 🖤. no cap, that's three slays in one ✨

it reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes one PPM file per page, named PPM-root-number.ppm, where number is the page number 🍓 if PDF-file is -, it reads the PDF straight from stdin, so you can pipe stuff in 🫶

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

• -f number — choose the first page to convert 💖
• -l number — choose the last page to convert 💖
• -o — only the odd numbered pages get generated 🦋
• -e — only the even numbered pages get generated 🦋
• -singlefile — writes just the first page and doesn't add digits to the name 🎀
• -r number — sets the X and Y resolution in DPI 🔥 the default is 150 DPI, lowkey perfect
• -rx number — sets just the X resolution in DPI 🔥 default is 150 DPI
• -ry number — sets just the Y resolution in DPI 🔥 default is 150 DPI
• -scale-to number — scales the long side of each page (width for landscape pages, height for portrait pages) to fit in number pixels ✨ the short side then follows the page's aspect ratio, so nothing gets squished 🙈
• -scale-to-x number — scales each page horizontally to fit in number pixels ✨ if -scale-to-y is set to -1, the vertical size is worked out from the page's aspect ratio 🧚
• -scale-to-y number — scales each page vertically to fit in number pixels ✨ if -scale-to-x is set to -1, the horizontal size is worked out from the aspect ratio 🧚
• -scale-dimension-before-rotation — swaps the horizontal and vertical size for a rotated (landscape) PDF before scaling instead of after 🔄
• -x number — the x-coordinate of the crop area's top left corner 🎯
• -y number — the y-coordinate of the crop area's top left corner 🎯
• -W number — the width of the crop area in pixels (default is 0) 📐
• -H number — the height of the crop area in pixels (default is 0) 📐
• -sz number — the size of the crop square in pixels, and it sets both W and H 📐
• -cropbox — uses the crop box instead of the media box when making the files 🖼️
• -hide-annotations — annotations stay hidden 🙈
• -mono — makes a monochrome PBM file instead of a color PPM file 🖤
• -gray — makes a grayscale PGM file instead of a color PPM file 🩶
• -displayprofile displayprofilefile — if poppler was built with colour management support, this sets the display profile to the ICC profile in displayprofilefile 🎨
• -defaultgrayprofile defaultgrayprofilefile — if poppler was built with colour management support, this sets the DefaultGray color space to the ICC profile in defaultgrayprofilefile 🎨
• -defaultrgbprofile defaultrgbprofilefile — if poppler was built with colour management support, this sets the DefaultRGB color space to the ICC profile in defaultrgbprofilefile 🎨
• -defaultcmykprofile defaultcmykprofilefile — if poppler was built with colour management support, this sets the DefaultCMYK color space to the ICC profile in defaultcmykprofilefile 🎨
• -png — makes a PNG file instead of a PPM file 🌈
• -jpeg — makes a JPEG file instead of a PPM file 🌈
• -jpegopt jpeg-options — used with -jpeg, this takes a list of options to control the JPEG compression 🫶 see JPEG OPTIONS below for what's available
• -tiff — makes a TIFF file instead of a PPM file 🌈
• -tiffcompression none | packbits | jpeg | lzw | deflate — picks the TIFF compression type 🗜️ it defaults to "none"
• -freetype yes | no — turns FreeType on or off (it's the TrueType / Type 1 font rasterizer) 🔤 it defaults to "yes"
• -thinlinemode none | solid | shape — sets the thin line mode 📏 it defaults to "none"
  • "solid" — lines thinner than one pixel get snapped to the pixel boundary and painted one pixel wide 📏
  • "shape" — lines thinner than one pixel get snapped to the pixel boundary and painted one pixel wide, but with a shape in proportion to their width 📏✨
• -aa yes | no — turns font anti-aliasing on or off 🖋️ it defaults to "yes"
• -aaVector yes | no — turns vector anti-aliasing on or off 🖋️ it defaults to "yes"
• -opw password — the owner password for the PDF 🔑 giving this bypasses all security restrictions, so use it wisely 👑
• -upw password — the user password for the PDF 🔑
• -q — shh, no messages or errors get printed 🤫
• -progress — prints progress info as each page is generated 📈 three space-separated fields go to STDERR: the number of the current page, the number of the last page that will be generated, and the path to the file written to
• -sep char — a single character separator between the name and the page number 🧩 default is -
• -forcenum — forces a page number even when there's only one page 🔢
• -v — prints copyright and version info 📜
• -h — prints usage info 🧾 (-help and --help do the exact same thing)

🚦 EXIT CODES 🚦

okay so the Xpdf tools use these exit codes:

• 0 — no error, we slay 💖
• 1 — error opening a PDF file 💀
• 2 — error opening an output file 💀
• 3 — error related to PDF permissions 🔒
• 99 — some other error 💀

🎀 JPEG OPTIONS 🎀

when JPEG output is on, the -jpegopt option controls the JPEG compression parameters ✨ it takes a string of the form "<opt>=<val>[,<opt>=<val>]". right now these are the available options:

• quality — picks the JPEG quality value 🎨 it has to be an integer between 0 and 100
• progressive — turns progressive JPEG output on or off 🌊 the possible values are "y" (progressive, yes) or "n" (non-progressive, no)
• optimize — decides whether to compute optimal Huffman coding tables for the JPEG output 🧠 this makes smaller files but makes an extra pass over the data 🙈 the value must be "y" or "n", with "y" doing the optimization, and otherwise the default Huffman tables get used

🫶 AUTHOR 🫶

the pdftoppm software and documentation are copyright 1996-2011 Glyph & Cog, LLC 📜

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

pdfdetach(1), pdffonts(1), pdfimages(1), pdfinfo(1), pdftocairo(1), pdftohtml(1), pdftops(1), pdftotext(1), pdfseparate(1), pdfsig(1), pdfunite(1) 💜

bestie, that's the whole pdftoppm(1) page 🦋 last updated 15 August 2011, so it's a little vintage, but still iconic 💅✨