[Blindmath] Summary - Extracting bitmap images from pdf files

[Michael Whapples]

Hello,
IVEO can be used with swell paper.

Michael Whapples

Sent from my iPod

On 28 Jan 2012, at 20:42, Richard Baldwin <baldwin at dickbaldwin.com> wrote:

> The purpose of this post is to summarize what I have learned about
> extracting images from pdf files during the conversations on this topic in
> a similar thread over the past few days.
> 
> The primary objective was to find a way for blind students to extract
> pictures as individual bitmap images from pdf files that are provided to
> them as electronic copies of their textbooks.
> 
> Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that blind students can successfully
> accomplish this task without sighted assistance. (Perhaps organizations of
> blind students should put pressure on Adobe to rectify the situation.) I
> only found two ways that it might be possible for a blind student to
> accomplish the task, and both are fraught with problems.
> 
> The most promising way is a procedure suggested by John Gardner of
> ViewPlus. To make a long story short, this involves a several-step process
> involving an IVEO system including a touchpad and the Creator Pro software,
> which I believe is an extra cost item over and above the basic IVEO system.
> I'm not certain if a Tiger is also required, or if some sort of
> less-expensive, printer-based embossing system, such as swell paper, would
> suffice.
> 
> Over and above the cost, this approach has its own set of problems. In
> particular, it requires the student to first read the pdf document and to
> identify the pages on which the images appear. In the physics textbook that
> I am working with, the location of a Figure may be on an entirely different
> page from the reference to the Figure in the text. In addition, the book
> contains numerous images without Figure numbers and/or captions. The
> student is supposed to be able to associate an image to the related text
> simply by the physical proximity of the two. A sighted student can probably
> succeed in doing this in most cases, A blind student may not be able to
> succeed in many cases.
> 
> Another approach is to purchase Acrobat Pro from Adobe for $445, which the
> Adobe tech support person claimed will extract images intact from a pdf
> file. (All of the free approaches that I tried extracted a few images
> intact but extracted most images in tiny bitmap files that must be
> reassembled to create the image.) Even if Acrobat Pro will extract images
> intact, I'm not certain that this will make it possible for blind students
> to extract and emboss those images. The textbook pdf files that I am
> working with contain thousands of bitmap images that are placed in and
> around the text solely for cosmetic purposes. These are thing like arrows,
> exclamation marks, etc. If Acrobat Pro will extract all of the images in a
> chapter intact, the student could expect to end up with hundreds of images
> files for every chapter. Even a dedicated sighted person would have
> difficulty sorting through all of those files trying to separate the wheat
> from the chaff.
> 
> Therefore, as a practical matter, barring the discovery of some technical
> capability that I have been unable to identify so far, blind students
> probably cannot successfully extract bitmap pictures from the pdf versions
> of many textbooks without sighted assistance.
> 
> SIGHTED ASSISTANCE
> There are several approaches available by which a sighted person could
> extract the pictures from the pdf file, but for the most part, they all
> involve a labor-intensive procedure using an image editor to crop small
> bitmaps out of large bitmaps and to save the small bitmaps in individual
> files.
> 
> The website at http://www.zamzar.com/ will accept an uploaded pdf file and
> send back a set of jpg image files, one for each page in the pdf document.
> Jamal has also indicated that he may be able to provide a stand-alone
> program that will convert a pdf file to a similar set of jpg files, one for
> each page in the pdf document.
> 
> The sighted assistant can use either of these two approaches to obtain the
> set of jpg files.
> 
> Then, using the original pdf document along with a pdf reader such as
> Acrobat (free) as a guide, the sighted assistant can open the page-image
> files in any of many free image editor programs, such as LView. (At least
> it was free when I got my copy.)
> 
> Having opened the page in the image editor, the assistant can then draw a
> rectangle around an image of interest, crop it out of the larger image, and
> save the cropped image under a descriptive file name. The assistant can
> repeat this process for every image of interest on every page in the entire
> document.
> 
> I wish we could have identified a better way to get the job done, but for
> now, it looks like this is what we are stuck with.
> 
> 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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