Extract Source Images from a PDF in Photoshop

Feb 10, 2011

—

How come I didn’t notice this sooner?

You can extract images, as is, directly from a PDF file, in Photoshop. I knew it had the ability to open a PDF and turn into a rasterized image, and that has been helpful from time to time.

But, try this:

In Photoshop, Go to File->Open, and select a PDF with images in it.
You should get an “Import PDF” dialog box, with options for how to crop the page, resolution, and so on.
In the upper left, you should see radio buttons to select pages or … HMMMMMM … images. Choose images instead of pages, and suddenly your cropping and sizing options are grayed out. But you will see a list of all the images embedded in the PDF:

Isn’t that hunky-dory?

Pick an image from the list, and press ‘OK’. You will open up the actual image embedded in the PDF. This is why the options are all grayed-out—you aren’t changing anything about the image.

Now you can work your evil ways on that l’il image. Oh no, don’t thank me.

Comments

5 responses to “Extract Source Images from a PDF in Photoshop”

Petra

January 25, 2017

Great, it did import some pictures from a PDF presentation, where I was expected to use all logos, etc. However, it imported only “photo” pictures, not “logo” pictures :(. Any idea with that?
Jeremy

January 25, 2017

Yeah, it’ll only pick out the raster images (like JPEGs or GIFs). If you have vector artwork, it won’t see that. For that you have two options:

1) Open the whole page in Photoshop, but open it scaled excessively big so your now-rasterized artwork won’t be overly pixellated, or
2) (much better) open the PDF in Illustrator. Another vector editing program like Inkscape should also be able to help you in that case.

Let me know how it goes!
Aurora kaylen

April 17, 2017

your Extract Source Images from a PDF in Photoshop post is very good and more effective. I have got more idea from here.thank you so much but I need just one idea that photoshop is the best for image editing?
Fab

September 15, 2017

Is there a way to save all the extracted imgs all at once?
maru

March 6, 2018

If you want to use Photoshop:
You can select all images (click 1st image, hold shift key and click last one). That will open them as different images but you will have to save them separately. You could create a batch action for that (also to change the color mode from CMYK to RGB).
If you have Adobe Acrobat Pro:
There is an option to “export all images” in Document Processing toolbar.

Extract Source Images from a PDF in Photoshop

Comments

5 responses to “Extract Source Images from a PDF in Photoshop”

Leave a Reply