News :: 15MR: Advanced PDF to JPG Converter v1.9.9.5
Welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s application is Advanced PDF to JPG Converter version 1.9.9.5 by IntraPDF—An application to convert from PDFs to JPGs, PNGs or many other graphical formats.
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“Many times you want to view or print out PDF file contents without using Acrobat reader. The simplest way to do so is to use IntraPDF’s PDF to JPG converter that allows you convert PDF files to any image format you prefer: jpg, bmp, gif, png.
Use PDF to JPG converter to save each page of your source PDF document as a separate graphical file. If you need to process a large number of PDF files, you can utilize the batch conversion mode allowing you to process several PDF files at a time.”
Quick Pros
- Easy interface; Ability to set batch defaults
- Conversions near as fast as Adobe Acrobat at 100% DPI
- Large set of options available including file formats (JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF & TIFF)
- Quality or resulting files appear very close or the same at Adobe Acrobat
- Batch conversion if you need it
Quick Cons
- DPI setting could use a fixed DPI, rather than a percentage or fixed pixel count
- File size is considerably larger than what Adobe Acrobat produces at the same settings
Samples (Page 3: Thanks to Vizier for PDF)
Expansion
With my profession, I use Adobe Acrobat day in and day out. I have clients that send my PDFs at least once a week and usually need to take it out of Acrobat. While I do use many of the other formats often, I find that usually all I need is the PDF to be in JPEG format for some quick alterations, image extraction or similar. While Adobe Acrobat does a decent job of converting out from PDF, I’ve always wondered how PDFs would come out in a PNG or BMP file for when I wanted to ensure a better end result.
When I launched up the application, I was delighted to see how easy the interface was to use. I set up my default settings first (A plus; It seems more programs today don’t come with persistent settings for converters anymore,) and proceeded to add two PDFs; One I have which is covered in images and the other I had from a previous test, of which the latter has samples above. I found the settings were plentiful but not overwhelming. The selection of available formats, quality and file settings is nice as well. The one thing that I would have liked to seen was instead of the DPI being in terms of percentage or width/height limits was the ability to set a fixed DPI rate – I work daily in 300DPI and would prefer to be able to set it at 300DPI.
The conversion process was surprisingly quick, even at 300% DPI. It only took a few seconds for 16 pages of one PDF to produce its resulting file. When I compared the resulting images from what Adobe produced, I could not see any easily identifiable differences between the two, which is a good thing. The one thing I noticed was a file size difference; 451KB (Advanced PDF to JPG Converter) versus 49KB (Adobe Acrobat) of which should have been comparable file qualities. While for myself this is not an issue due to why I am using this application, but for those looking to use this application for web-based use, you may want to flex and see what is better for size- and quality-wise.
Final Verdict
This application is surprisingly good application. The application has a clean interface, no major bugs I could find and ran quickly and efficiently. For free, anyone who works with PDFs on a regular basis could find use in this application as compared to launching up Acrobat. And while I do like this application, $49.95 for this application is fairly heavily-priced. I could not warrant paying $49.95 for it, and if I were to have stumbled upon the demo of this application in the wild, I would have passed it up after seeing the price tag even without launching the application once. While the application is great and all, I feel for most who would use this application would likely pass it up with the same feeling I would have had: ‘Why get it or try it when it is that expensive and it is something already included in Acrobat?’
Posted by BladedThoth on Tuesday, April 10, 2007
