Category:Techwriter
One of the more annoying situations while working on a design project is losing an Illustrator, .bmp, .png, .tiff, or .eps file amidst the huge maze of folders between networked computers. There's also the matter of corrupted JPEGs and irrecoverable EPS files. Adobe Bridge can only help so much in a disorganized mess of images and not even Photoshop can fix an image it can't even open.
As primitive as it may sound, a technical writer may have to pull an image from a previous final product - say, a high-resolution PDF file. InDesign allows users to Place a whole PDF unto a layout. Skillful use of Frame options can result in a clean image on a document. However, for those equipped with Adobe Acrobat, users can also use the Crop Tool to cut out that essential image. The quality of the image is not only maintained but the resulting PDF can then be converted to a different image format if necessary (Acrobat can save PDFs to TIFF, EPS, and JPEG).
1. Click Tools then Advanced Editing. Select Crop Tool. Alternately, click Crop pages on the Document menu.
2. Click and drag to create a border around the image.
3. Double-click to change margin settings if needed.
4. The Crop Tool crops the PDF page but the PDF remains within the PDF file. To use the cropped PDF as an image, click Document then Extract Pages.
5. Tick Extract Pages as separate files.
InDesign users can just place the PDF and scale the image. In some instances, cropped PDF from a PDF exported from InDesign or Illustrator still retains its vector properties allowing users to even modify the extracted image.
Secured PDF files prevent the use of Crop or Snapshot in Acrobat. There are many ways (e.g. freeware, Linux applications) to extract images or text even from a secured PDF. However, a simpler approach is to use a high-quality screenshot application. Zoom in using Adobe Acrobat's controls to get a large digital view and capture the image at the highest quality.
Windows 7's Snipping Tool is neither the best nor the most practical since quality is dubious and the image can only be saved as GIF, JPEG, or PNG. CorelDraw includes a professional screen-capturing tool as do most Adobe programs such as Captivate. There are, however, free applications such as Lightscreen that can capture screenshots adequately enough. Moreover, there are plenty of freeware and FOSS out there that can easily extract images from a PDF.
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