Converting PDF to images automatically

Question

So the state I\'m in released a bunch of data in PDF form, but to make matters worse, most (all?) of the PDFs appear to be letters typed in Office, printed/fax, and then sca

Answer 1

Here's an alternative approach to turning a .pdf file into images: Use an image printer. I've successfully used the function below to "print" pdf's to jpeg images with ImagePrinter Pro. However, there are MANY image printers out there. Pick the one you like. Some of the code may need to be altered slightly based on the image printer you pick and the standard file saving format that image printer uses.

import win32api
import os

def pdf_to_jpg(pdfPath, pages):
    # print pdf using jpg printer
    # 'pages' is the number of pages in the pdf
    filepath = pdfPath.rsplit('/', 1)[0]
    filename = pdfPath.rsplit('/', 1)[1]

    #print pdf to jpg using jpg printer
    tempprinter = "ImagePrinter Pro"
    printer = '"%s"' % tempprinter
    win32api.ShellExecute(0, "printto", filename, printer,  ".",  0)

    # Add time delay to ensure pdf finishes printing to file first
    fileFound = False
    if pages > 1:
        jpgName = filename.split('.')[0] + '_' + str(pages - 1) + '.jpg'
    else:
        jpgName = filename.split('.')[0] + '.jpg'
    jpgPath = filepath + '/' + jpgName
    waitTime = 30
    for i in range(waitTime):
        if os.path.isfile(jpgPath):
            fileFound = True
            break
        else:
            time.sleep(1)

    # print Error if the file was never found
    if not fileFound:
        print "ERROR: " + jpgName + " wasn't found after " + str(waitTime)\
              + " seconds"

    return jpgPath

The resulting jpgPath variable tells you the path location of the last jpeg page of the pdf printed. If you need to get another page, you can easily add some logic to modify the path to get prior pages