Step-by-Step Guide to Extract Images from PDF on Linux: Get Your Images from PDFEasily!

PDF documents often comprise a lot of pictures. After all, we are all living in a world where people understand visual faster than text. Often, we wish to save a specific picture from a PDF document. While several tools are available in the Windows and Mac worlds, there are limited options to do so on Linux. Linux users often wonder how to extract images from PDF in Linux.

The Best Tool to Extract Images from PDF on Windows & Mac

While there is a large population of Linux users, this population is no match to the number of Windows and Mac users. It is obvious that some of the best tools to extract images from PDF are available on Windows and Mac operating systems. If you are looking for the best tool to extract images from PDF documents, UPDF is the software that you must try out.

UPDF is a high-quality PDF editor with rich image editing options. The interface of the tool is very delightful and offers a seamless way to edit images. One can easily extract pictures from PDF without the requirement of any kind of tool training. The tool also offers users a way to resize, reposition, copy and remove image from the PDF document in seconds.

The software is fast and very lightweight, unlike other software. A beginner can also achieve all PDF editing actions with great ease. Besides of editing features, UPDF supports other advanced functions, such as, annotate, convert, OCR, organize PDFs. Users of UPDF have provided some great ratings and industry experts love the software due to its high speed and simple interface.

Steps on How to Extract Photos from PDF with UPDF

Let us now explore how to extract an image from a PDF document using the UPDF tool. You will be able to understand by the end of the below tutorial that the tool is extremely intuitive and requires a minimal learning curve.

The steps to extract an image from a PDF using UPDF are as follows –

Step 1: Open the PDF

The first step is to install the UPDF tool on your system. The tool is readily available for both the Windows and Mac operating systems.

To extract an image from a PDF document, you will first need to open the PDF file in the UPDF tool. Click on the "Open File" button that appears upon launching UPDF. Choose the PDF document on your computer to open it.

Step 2: Enter the Editing mode 

Since you wish to edit the PDF images, click on the "Edit PDF" icon from the left toolbar. This option reveals the editing panel in the tool.

Step 3: Extract Images from the PDF

Spot the image in the PDF document. Click the image, you will see a purple borderline which means you have selected the image. You will see there are 6 icons that appear to edit the image. Select the "Extract Image" icon.

Alternatively, you can right-click the image, and choose the "Extract Image" option. This option will also help you extract an image from a PDF.

Both methods will open up the "Save" windows, and you can choose the destination for the image and click "OK".

Video Tutorial on How to Extract Image from PDF

How to Extract Images from PDF on Linux

There are many command line tools available for extracting text from PDF files on Linux. However, there are limited options to extract images from PDF in Linux. If you wish to extract images from PDF in Linux, you can do so using the command line utility called "pdfimages". You can follow the below steps to extract images from PDF in Linux using pdfimages -

1. Firstly, you must ensure to install the "pdfimages" tool. This tool is part of the popular-utils package. Depending on the flavor of Linux you are using, you may need to install the utility using different commands.
2. Once you have ascertained that the utility is installed on your system, launch the utility. Press "Ctrl + Alt + T" to open a terminal window.
3. Now, type the following command at the prompt -
   pdfimages/home/lori/Documents/SampleWithImages.pdf/home/lori/Documents/ExtractedImages/image
4. In the above command replace the first path in the command and the PDF filename with the path and filename for your original PDF file. The second path should be the path to the root folder into which you want to save the extracted images.

In this way, you can extract images from PDF files in Linux.

Scenarios in which You Need to Extract Images from PDF on Linux

There are many situations when you may need to extract an image from a PDF on Linux. These could arise during your day-to-day work on Linux systems while dealing with images embedded in PDF documents. Below are a few situations that may require you to extract images from PDF on Linux.

1. While you are browsing a PDF image gallery on Linux, you may wish to extract images from the PDF on Linux using the command line. This could be just to enjoy the picture at a later point in time or to save memory.
2. You may wish to save some images from PDF documents to refer to them later. These images could possibly be flow charts or system diagrams that serve as references for engineering projects.
3. It is common for users of graphics-intensive applications to use Linux systems. These users may occasionally be required to extract images from a PDF document on Linux and input them into the graphics-intensive application.
4. Healthcare workers using Linux machines may often need to extract images from a PDF document on Linux. These images may be scan images from a report or reference images from a medical handbook.

In all the above situations, users may want to extract an image from PDF on Linux.

Conclusion

It is clear from the above article that there is an easy command line utility to extract images from PDF on Linux. However, Windows and Mac users rely on more user interface-based tools. UPDF is the perfect tool for Windows and Mac users. The tool is a complete suite of PDF editing utilities neatly packaged in the software. The rich image editing options make the editing of images in PDF documents seamless and quick. There are no other tools of such high quality that can help achieve what UPDF can. Therefore, if you are looking to extract images from PDF documents on Windows and Mac, UPDF is indeed the best option.