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Make PDF from images

Nermal

Nermal

Moderator
Original poster
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
21,188
4,850
New Zealand
First of all, I know very little about making PDFs, my experience is limited to clicking the PDF button in the Print box :rolleyes:

I have a collection of JPEG files, which are supposed to be viewed in sequence. I would like to assemble these into a PDF, one per page. How do I go about doing this? I can convert individual pictures using Preview, but I can't figure out how to do multiple pages.

Thanks :)
 
Nermal said:
First of all, I know very little about making PDFs, my experience is limited to clicking the PDF button in the Print box :rolleyes:

I have a collection of JPEG files, which are supposed to be viewed in sequence. I would like to assemble these into a PDF, one per page. How do I go about doing this? I can convert individual pictures using Preview, but I can't figure out how to do multiple pages.

Thanks :)
Click to expand...
Just place the photos into any application that does multiple pages -- Appleworks, Microsoft Word, whatever to make a single, multipage document, and PDF that.
 
OK, I'm officially an idiot. Not because I didn't think of that, but because I DID think of it, then decided it wouldn't work :rolleyes:
 
Nermal said:
OK, I'm officially an idiot. Not because I didn't think of that, but because I DID think of it, then decided it wouldn't work :rolleyes:
Click to expand...
One caveat with that route though, which will definitely work, is that the resolution of the resulting PDF may be different than the original JPEG.

e.g. if you print a 1200 dpi JPEG to a 300 dpi PDF, you may get some loss of information or if the case were reversed, you may get scaling artifacts. Here's a ruby script that claims to be OS X compatible and will not change your JPEGS at all, just wrap 'em in a PDF.

http://koan.studentenweb.org/software/jpeg2pdf.html

B
 
OK, all done :)

I couldn't get jpeg2pdf to work (apparently it doesn't support greyscale JPEGs, but I couldn't get it to work with colour ones either), and Word left a border around the pictures which I couldn't get rid of. I gave PowerPoint a go, and it was excellent.

The resulting file is 1.5 MB and contains 20 pages (19 of which are greyscale), and although the quality isn't perfect, it's certainly good enough.

Thanks for your help :)
 
Easier yet, import the images into iPhoto, which supports a wide variety of layouts, all which of course can be output to pdf.

Also, I don't think anyone suggested using Preview for creating pdfs from jpegs. Works perfectly. No translator required.
 
I love doing this, it's very versatile, yet even a 1-page PDF with 2 small pictures on it tops out at like 24+ MB or more.

Great way to make a to-go photo album, just no good for sharing via e-mail.
 
JDOG_ said:
I love doing this, it's very versatile, yet even a 1-page PDF with 2 small pictures on it tops out at like 24+ MB or more.

Great way to make a to-go photo album, just no good for sharing via e-mail.
Click to expand...

If you're using Tiger, try the pdf compress option. Reduces the file size by around 90%!
 
I use a program from "apago" called "PDFshrink" to get my pdf file sizes down. In some cases it does a better job than Acrobat Pro. Although it does cost $35.00 i found it a very useful tool.
 
I can vouch for PDFShrink as well. Gives me excellent results everytime even with graphic heavy files.

Joe.
 
Why not use the pdf compression feature built into Tiger instead of buying/using a freestanding application that does the same thing? Just wondering.
 
IJ Reilly said:
Why not use the pdf compression feature built into Tiger instead of buying/using a freestanding application that does the same thing? Just wondering.
Click to expand...

I was not posting about pdf compression. I was just refering to the original question of how to create a multipage pdf of pictures. I had the same problem a few months ago and this freeware works great. I could not find any features in OSX 10.4 to merge multiple jpeg files into one PDF. How are you accomplishing that?:confused:
 
Just adding another suggestion for making PDFs. PDFLab is great. You can combine all sorts of files together and create single pdfs and such.

ft
 
Bote said:
I was not posting about pdf compression. I was just refering to the original question of how to create a multipage pdf of pictures. I had the same problem a few months ago and this freeware works great. I could not find any features in OSX 10.4 to merge multiple jpeg files into one PDF. How are you accomplishing that?:confused:
Click to expand...

The previous two posters were suggesting freestanding applications for pdf compression, a function now built into the OS. I was wondering whether there was any advantage to that method (for Tiger users at least).

As mentioned above, try iPhoto, which gives you quite a bit of flexibility for this task. And as also mentioned, PDFLab will convert jpeg images into pdf files as well as joining multiple files into one pdf. It's one very handy freeware application!
 
IJ Reilly said:
The previous two posters were suggesting freestanding applications for pdf compression, a function now built into the OS. I was wondering whether there was any advantage to that method (for Tiger users at least).

As mentioned above, try iPhoto, which gives you quite a bit of flexibility for this task. And as also mentioned, PDFLab will convert jpeg images into pdf files as well as joining multiple files into one pdf. It's one very handy freeware application!
Click to expand...

Oh, I really never fiddled with the compressing pdfs. It might just come down to personal preference.

Believe it or not I really dislike iPhoto so I never really played with it much and now that I got photoshop I never use it at all. Eventhough I will probably never use it I will check out PDFLab just to indulge my addiction of collecting little apps. :) However, I highly recommend combine pdf.
 
IJ Reilly said:
I was wondering whether there was any advantage to that method (for Tiger users at least).
Click to expand...
As I mentioned earlier in the thread. Many of the usual ways this is done end up resampling the JPEG image (up or down), rather than just wrapping it in PDF garb. If that's OK, go for it!

This thread https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/160020/ highlights a particular issue with this and Word. A 150MB Word file turned into a 1.8GB PDF. :eek: It should have been no more than 150 MB since PDF is generally more efficient than Word. I'm sure Adobe Acrobat would have done a better job, or at least highlighted the issue.

IJ Reilly said:
As mentioned above, try iPhoto, which gives you quite a bit of flexibility for this task.
Click to expand...
The flexibility in iPhoto is great, and is particularly useful for sending a bunch of pictures to someone by e-mail but is not always desired.

I'll be sure to check out PDFLabs and PDF combiner, they both sound extremely useful!

B
 
FWIW, I've used all of the pdf combining tools and IMO, PDFLab is the clear winner. All of the others have issues, from unpleasant to show-stopping.
 
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