PDF: The Portable Document Format
The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is used for representing two-dimensional documents in a device-independent and display resolution-independent fixed-layout document format. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the document.
PDF is an open standard, and is now being prepared for submission as an ISO standard. Adobe is an evil company.
Contents
PDF Document Viewers
View the list of PDF Viewers That Are Open Source.
PDF Authoring
PDF Utilities
Linux PDF Tools: tiff2ps and ps2pdf
On Linux the tiff2ps command is part of libtiff-tools. The command line tools in libtiff-tools include tiffcp, tiff2ps', tiffdump and tiffsplit. Windows executables for libtiff-tools can be found at stillhq.com, e.g. http://www.stillhq.com/libtiff/win32/3.5.4/tiffcp.exe and http://www.stillhq.com/libtiff/win32/3.5.4/tiff2ps.exe
The Linux ps2pdf command is part of Ghostscript. Those command line tools are ps2pdf, gs or gswin32 (Win32 version). Ghostscript for Windows is gs651w32.exe
Netpbm for Windows is netpbm-9.19-bin.zip and requires Cygwin.
make pdf: from tiff, Use Tiff to PS (in linux)
tiff2ps *.tiff > tiffs.ps
from PS to PDF
ps2pdf tiffs.ps
Print to PDF in Windows
CutePDF Writer
There is a free version and a more feature rich pay version on their web site, http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.asp
Print to PDF in Linux
One simple option that works in Debian distributions such as the popular Ubuntu Linux is to use cups-pdf.
See: Install and Use cups-pdf in Ubuntu for a detailed guide.
Convert Images to PDF in Windows
Free Image to PDF Converter. Supported formats are BMP, DIB, GIF, JPEG, JPG, JPE, JFIF, PNG, TIFF,TIF. Multiple files to a multi-page PDF. The tool combines multiple directories and images into one PDF.
Installer: PDFdu_Image_To_PDF_setup.exe
Developer Web Site: http://pdfdu.com/app/image-to-pdf-converter.aspx
Convert PDF to Images in Windows
Windows Print Driver: PDF to TIFF
The Virtual Image Printer driver by tariel will allow you to convert a PDF to multiple page image files in several image formats. This is not all The Virtual Image Printer and it is not exclusively for converting PDF to images. However, it is very handy for performing this task under the Windows XP operating system.
GhostScript
The installer "gs915w32.exe" is the Win32 installer as of Dec 2014 for Microsoft Windows 32-bit Operating Systems such as Windows XP. Using GhostScript a PDF can be converted to PNG for example.
gswin32c.exe -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pnggray -sOutputFile="test.png" "test.pdf"
GhostScript requires a proper PDF. Some PDF files are broken, in that they will open in some viewers, but are not completely compliant with the standard. In short, GhostScript is picky.
