pdf2image

A python (3.5+) module that wraps pdftoppm and pdftocairo to convert PDF to a PIL Image object

How to install

pip install pdf2image

Windows

Windows users will have to install poppler for Windows, then add the bin/ folder to PATH.

Mac

Mac users will have to install poppler for Mac.

Linux

Most distros ship with pdftoppm and pdftocairo. If they are not installed, refer to your package manager to install poppler-utils

Platform-independant (Using `conda`)

Install poppler: conda install -c conda-forge poppler
Install pdf2image: pip install pdf2image

How does it work?

from pdf2image import convert_from_path, convert_from_bytes

from pdf2image.exceptions import (
    PDFInfoNotInstalledError,
    PDFPageCountError,
    PDFSyntaxError
)

Then simply do:

images = convert_from_path('/home/belval/example.pdf')

images = convert_from_bytes(open('/home/belval/example.pdf', 'rb').read())

OR better yet

import tempfile

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as path:
    images_from_path = convert_from_path('/home/belval/example.pdf', output_folder=path)
    # Do something here

images will be a list of PIL Image representing each page of the PDF document.

Here are the definitions:

convert_from_path(pdf_path, dpi=200, output_folder=None, first_page=None, last_page=None, fmt='ppm', jpegopt=None, thread_count=1, userpw=None, use_cropbox=False, strict=False, transparent=False, single_file=False, output_file=str(uuid.uuid4()), poppler_path=None, grayscale=False, size=None, paths_only=False)

convert_from_bytes(pdf_file, dpi=200, output_folder=None, first_page=None, last_page=None, fmt='ppm', jpegopt=None, thread_count=1, userpw=None, use_cropbox=False, strict=False, transparent=False, single_file=False, output_file=str(uuid.uuid4()), poppler_path=None, grayscale=False, size=None, paths_only=False)

Need help?

Use the mattermost chat to ask questions on the helpdesk and get direct support.

What's new?

jpegopt parameter allows for tuning of the output JPEG when using fmt="jpeg" (-jpegopt in pdftoppm CLI) (Thank you @abieler)
pdfinfo_from_path and pdfinfo_from_bytes which expose the output of the pdfinfo CLI
paths_only parameter will return image paths instead of Image objects, to prevent OOM when converting a big PDF
size parameter allows you to define the shape of the resulting images (-scale-to in pdftoppm CLI)
- size=400 will fit the image to a 400x400 box, preserving aspect ratio
- size=(400, None) will make the image 400 pixels wide, preserving aspect ratio
- size=(500, 500) will resize the image to 500x500 pixels, not preserving aspect ratio
grayscale parameter allows you to convert images to grayscale (-gray in pdftoppm CLI)
single_file parameter allows you to convert the first PDF page only, without adding digits at the end of the output_file
Allow the user to specify poppler's installation path with poppler_path
Fixed a bug where PNGs buffer with a non-terminating I-E-N-D sequence would throw an exception
Fixed a bug that left open file descriptors when using convert_from_bytes() (Thank you @FabianUken)

Performance tips

Using an output folder is significantly faster if you are using an SSD. Otherwise i/o usually becomes the bottleneck.
Using multiple threads can give you some gains but avoid more than 4 as this will cause i/o bottleneck (even on my NVMe SSD!).
If i/o is your bottleneck, using the JPEG format can lead to significant gains.
PNG format is pretty slow, this is because of the compression.
If you want to know the best settings (most settings will be fine anyway) you can clone the project and run python tests.py to get timings.

Limitations / known issues

A relatively big PDF will use up all your memory and cause the process to be killed (unless you use an output folder)

Metadata

Release files for pdf2image 1.11.0

For a detailed explanation of source distributions (sdists) and built distributions (wheels), please see the package formats documentation.

Source distribution (sdist)

Source distribution for pdf2image 1.11.0
File	Size	Uploaded
pdf2image-1.11.0.tar.gz	8.1 kB	Dec 19, 2019	Details

Release files / pdf2image-1.11.0.tar.gz

Download URL	pdf2image-1.11.0.tar.gz
Size	8.1 kB
Tags	Source
SHA-256 checksum How to use checksums	`787f6dd77dc02786913fd4ee5766bb9241fe807e3c6ee90e3cff18bcf2f23555`
BLAKE2b-256 checksum How to use checksums	`55bea08351b2c2b7c0896062a739018b069774167ffe8c78265daef63b6e060e`
Upload date	Dec 19, 2019
Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? What is trusted publishing?	No
Uploaded via	`twine/1.15.0 pkginfo/1.5.0.1 requests/2.22.0 setuptools/28.8.0 requests-toolbelt/0.9.1 tqdm/4.40.2 CPython/3.5.7`