pdfimages(1)                General Commands Manual               pdfimages(1)



NAME
       pdfimages  -  Portable  Document  Format (PDF) image extractor (version
       4.06)

SYNOPSIS
       pdfimages [options] PDF-file image-root

DESCRIPTION
       Pdfimages saves images from a Portable Document Format  (PDF)  file  as
       Portable  Pixmap  (PPM), Portable Graymap (PGM), Portable Bitmap (PBM),
       or JPEG files.

       Pdfimages reads the PDF file, scans one or more  pages,  PDF-file,  and
       writes  one  PPM,  PGM,  PBM,  or JPEG file for each image, image-root-
       nnnn.xxx, where nnnn is the image number and  xxx  is  the  image  type
       (.ppm, .pgm, .pbm, .jpg).

       NB:  pdfimages  extracts  the raw image data from the PDF file, without
       performing any additional transforms.  Any  rotation,  clipping,  color
       inversion, etc. done by the PDF content stream is ignored.

CONFIGURATION FILE
       Pdfimages  reads  a  configuration  file at startup.  It first tries to
       find the user's private config file, ~/.xpdfrc.  If that doesn't exist,
       it looks for a system-wide config file, typically /etc/xpdfrc (but this
       location can be changed when pdfimages is built).   See  the  xpdfrc(5)
       man page for details.

OPTIONS
       Many  of  the following options can be set with configuration file com-
       mands.  These are listed in square brackets with the description of the
       corresponding command line option.

       -f number
              Specifies the first page to scan.

       -l number
              Specifies the last page to scan.

       -j     Normally, all images are written as PBM (for monochrome images),
              PGM (for grayscale images), or PPM  (for  color  images)  files.
              With  this option, images in DCT format are saved as JPEG files.
              All non-DCT images are saved in  PBM/PGM/PPM  format  as  usual.
              (Inline images are always saved in PBM/PGM/PPM format.)

       -J     Write  JPX  /  JPEG  2000  images as JPEG 2000 files (similar to
              "-j", but for JPEG 2000).

       -raw   Write all images in PDF-native formats.  Most of the formats are
              not  standard  image formats, so this option is primarily useful
              as input to a tool that generates PDF files.  (Inline images are
              always saved in PBM/PGM/PPM format.)

       -u     Write  only  one copy of each unique image. If the same image is
              used multiple times, possibly across multiple  pages,  pdfimages
              will  only  write  one image file. "Uniqueness" is determined by
              looking for reuse of image objects withiin the PDF file; if mul-
              tiiple  copies  of  an  image are embedded, pdfimages will treat
              them as separate, unique images.

       -list  Write a one-line summary to stdout for each image.  The  summary
              provides  the  image file name, the page number, the image width
              and height, the horizontal  and  vertical  resolution  (DPI)  as
              drawn,  the  color space type, and the number of bits per compo-
              nent (BPC).

       -listonly
              Write a one-line summary to stdout for each  image  (similar  to
              "-list"), but do not generate any image files. If this option is
              used, the "image-root" argument must not be provided.

       -opw password
              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
              will bypass all security restrictions.

       -upw password
              Specify the user password for the PDF file.

       -verbose
              Print  a status message (to stdout) before processing each page.
              [config file: printStatusInfo]

       -q     Don't print any messages or errors.  [config file: errQuiet]

       -cfg config-file
              Read config-file in place of ~/.xpdfrc or the system-wide config
              file.

       -v     Print copyright and version information.

       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)

EXIT CODES
       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:

       0      No error.

       1      Error opening a PDF file.

       2      Error opening an output file.

       3      Error related to PDF permissions.

       98     Out of memory.

       99     Other error.

AUTHOR
       The  pdfimages software and documentation are copyright 1998-2025 Glyph
       & Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       xpdf(1),  pdftops(1),  pdftotext(1),  pdftohtml(1),  pdfinfo(1),   pdf-
       fonts(1), pdfdetach(1), pdftoppm(1), pdftopng(1), xpdfrc(5)
       http://www.xpdfreader.com/



                                  14 Nov 2025                     pdfimages(1)
