pdf2image

When processing large PDFs, converting them directly to memory can exhaust system resources. To prevent this, provide an output_folder argument. This instructs pdf2image to save the converted images to disk. The resulting objects are still compatible with Pillow and will load the image data on demand.

import tempfile
from pdf2image import convert_from_path

with tempfile.TemporaryDirectory() as path:
    images_from_path = convert_from_path("/home/user/example.pdf", output_folder=path)

For a platform-independent installation using Conda, follow these steps:

1. Install poppler from conda-forge:

   conda install -c conda-forge poppler

2. Install pdf2image via pip:

   pip install pdf2image

To achieve better performance when converting PDFs:

• Use an output folder: This is significantly faster if you are using an SSD. It also prevents Out-Of-Memory (OOM) errors for large PDFs.
• Use JPEG format: If I/O is your bottleneck, using fmt='jpeg' can lead to significant gains. Note that PNG is slower due to compression.
• Thread count: Using multiple threads can provide gains, but avoid using more than 4 threads to prevent I/O bottlenecks.
• Use pdftocairo: Set use_pdftocairo=True to force the use of pdftocairo, which may improve performance.
• Use paths_only=True: If you are dealing with very large PDFs and want to avoid memory exhaustion, set paths_only=True to receive file paths instead of PIL Image objects.

Use apt-get to install the poppler-utils package.

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

Windows users must install poppler. It is recommended to use the @oschwartz10612 version.

After downloading, you have two options to make it available to pdf2image:

1. Add the bin/ folder of the poppler installation to your system PATH.
2. Pass the path directly to the conversion function using the poppler_path argument.

Example:

images = convert_from_path(r'C:\path\to\poppler-xx\bin', '/home/belval/example.pdf')

Since Poppler is not available via standard Windows package managers, follow these steps:

1. Download the latest poppler package from the oschwartz10612 releases.
2. Extract the directory to a location on your system.
3. Add the bin/ directory from the extracted folder to your system's PATH environment variable.
4. Verify the installation by opening cmd and running pdftoppm -h.

Use convert_from_bytes to convert PDF data directly from a byte stream. This is useful when the PDF content is already in memory or being read from a stream.

from pdf2image import convert_from_bytes

with open("/home/user/example.pdf","rb") as pdf:
    images = convert_from_bytes(pdf.read())

Use pacman to install the poppler package.

sudo pacman -S poppler

Use Homebrew to install the poppler package.

brew install poppler

Install the pdf2image Python module using pip:

pip install pdf2image

Note: This module requires poppler to be installed on your system to function.

If you need to modify the tool (e.g., to add a new language), you can install it from the official repository source.

git clone https://github.com/Belval/pdf2image
python3 setup.py install