[Blindmath] Extracting bitmap images from pdf files

[Sina Bahram]

I had in mind the pro version of acrobat, but that solution hardly scales.

Let me think on this for a bit.

Website: www.SinaBahram.com
Twitter: @SinaBahram

-----Original Message-----
From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Richard Baldwin
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:25 PM
To: john.gardner at orst.edu; Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
Cc: accessibleimage at freelists.org
Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Extracting bitmap images from pdf files

Sina,

I have tried the pdf to html image harvesting trick with several onsite
converters. Dozens of websites claim to offer the conversion service. Of
the four or five that I tried, only one seemed to do the job and as I
recall, it was limited to 2-mbyte pdf files, which is a problem. Also, on
that one, whenever I harvested the image from the html page, I got a large
blank image with a small image somewhere on it. Although I can crop the
small image from the large blank image, sight is required to pull that off.

 Do you have a favorite way to convert pdf files to html files?

Thanks,
Dick Baldwin

On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:33 PM, John Gardner <john.gardner at orst.edu>wrote:

> Dick, if someone is fortunate enough to have a ViewPlus embosser and IVEO
> Creator Pro, she can have pretty good access to images.
> * import the PDF into IVEO Creator Pro.
> * Check the PDF to find which pages have images of interest and emboss
> those
> pages.
> * Put the embossed page on the touchpad and "Zoom Rectangle" by clicking on
> diagonally-opposite corners of the image of interest.  This will zoom that
> image to occupy maximum size the page will permit.
> * Emboss the zoomed image and read it using the touchpad.  Horizontal text
> on the image should read when pressed.  The OCR in Creator Pro works really
> well with PDF's so if the resolution is at all decent, the text usually is
> OCRed well.
> * Go back to the original image and do same for any other image on that
> page.  Repeat for images on other pages.
>
> Note that a sighted person can skip the first embossing step and just zoom
> those images.  Handy to have sighted people around, but if there aren't it
> just takes a little longer.  By the way, that sighted person can create
> overlays on important objects on the graphic and label them to improve
> accessibility even more.
>
> John
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org]
> On
> Behalf Of Richard Baldwin
> Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 10:08 AM
> To: BlindMath Mailing List; accessibleimage at freelists.org
> Subject: [Blindmath] Extracting bitmap images from pdf files
>
> Many blind students receive electronic textbooks in pdf format.
>
> Many textbooks contain lots of images.
>
> Many images are poorly described in textbooks.
>
> Various ways to convert bitmap images into tactile images are available --
> some fairly good, some not so good, some very poor. However, regardless of
> the quality of the conversion to tactile format, you must have the original
> image file in order to get anything.
>
> I have tried four or five different online file conversion sites in an
> attempt to find a clean way that a blind student can extract the images
> from a pdf textbook file without success. Different sites have different
> problems, but they all seem to have some kind of problems that make it very
> difficult to extract the images from pdf files.
>
> Has anyone identified an online site or downloadable program that is
> available either free or at a reasonable price to cleanly extract the
> images from pdf files, which often range up to 10 or more megabytes  or
> more in size?
>
> Thanks,
> Dick Baldwin
>
> --
> Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
> Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
> http://www.DickBaldwin.com
>
> Professor of Computer Information Technology
> Austin Community College
> (512) 223-4758
> mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
> http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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-- 
Richard G. Baldwin (Dick Baldwin)
Home of Baldwin's on-line Java Tutorials
http://www.DickBaldwin.com

Professor of Computer Information Technology
Austin Community College
(512) 223-4758
mailto:Baldwin at DickBaldwin.com
http://www.austincc.edu/baldwin/
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