pdfimages

pdfimages is a command-line utility used to extract embedded images from PDF files without re-encoding or rendering the pages. It is distributed with the Xpdf project and is also included in the Poppler-utils package used on many Linux distributions. The program scans the PDF for image objects and saves each image as a separate file, preserving the original image data whenever possible.

The tool is useful for salvaging graphics or photos from PDFs. By default, non-JPEG images are saved in their extracted form, while JPEG images can be preserved as JPEG data when invoked with the appropriate options. Output files are created with a common root name and a numeric suffix, with extensions chosen to reflect the image format when determinable. pdfimages can also provide metadata about the images it finds.

Key options include -list to print information about all images embedded in the PDF, -f and -l to limit extraction to a page range, and -j to preserve JPEG images as JPEG rather than re-encoding them. These features allow users to selectively inspect and extract images from large documents.

Typical usage is: pdfimages [options] input.pdf image-root. For example, pdfimages -list document.pdf lists all embedded images; pdfimages -f 1 -l 3 -j report.pdf extracted creates files named like image-root-000.jpg, image-root-001.png, etc., for the images found on pages 1 through 3. pdfimages is available on most systems with Xpdf or Poppler installations and is commonly used in data extraction workflows.