Acrobat X Custom Action to Save PDF as JPG (not export all images)

Question

Can I use Acrobat X Pro to batch process hundreds of multipage PDFs to JPGs?

This question is very similar to what I am after but I am wondering if there is a way to do it in Acrobat X Pro. I have asked on superuser.com and the adobe forums and have received no conclusive answers. The previously linked question brought me here.

I have several hundred pdfs. Some were originally composed from Tiffs and others JPGs. I'd like to convert them all to JPGs. Ideally I would do it on the command line.

The following:

convert document.pdf document.jpg

works really well, when the source material was originally a JPG, but if it was originally a TIFF not so well. I have found a "ghostscript" that can handle the conversion from tiff, but not reliably. Plus, I have no real way to determine what the PDF was composed of originally.

I am turning to MS Windows and Acrobat X Pro to handle my troubles. I have been a linux user for the past five or so years, so my familiarity with adobe products is rusty. Acrobat X can easily save a multi-page PDF to a JPG, and they look great regardless of if the origin files.

However, I see no clear way to do this as a batch (aka: "Action"). I see an action to export all the images in a document, and for some reason it gives me three images from a page. with only one of the three being useable. But is there a way to specify a custom Action that simply saves the PDF as JPGs?

Why not as of much importance, is there also a way to specify proper padding? For example, when you manually save a 9 page document to JPGs it appends

• _Page_1.jpg
• _Page_2.jpg
• etc.

A 900 page document will list page 1 as "_Page_001.jpg".

Perferablly it would be nice to always have "%04d", or "_Page_0001.jpg".

Note: I've include other Adobe Tags as I am have many products in the CS 5.5 suite to work with — yes I know its older, and no I don't know all of the ones I have.

Answer 1

For the sake of documenting this, here's how I would go about it.

To create the files:

• From within Acrobat X or XI, open the Actions Wizard and choose "Create New Action"

• In the Files to be Processed panel, either choose "Add Files..." under Default option: or choose them explicitly by clicking the document or folder (processes all documents in the specified folder) icon

• In Choose tools to add: open Save & Export, choose "Export All Images As JPEG" and add it to the action.

• Under "Specify Settings," either leave Prompt User selected or explicitly set up the export options.

• Save and name the Action

• Run the Action

An alternative page-at-a-time approach is to use Save rather than Export All Images... and choose an image format in the Save settings.

To handle the file naming problem:

• Open the folder with the saved images in Bridge

• Ctl-A/Cmd-A to select all

• Select Tools < Batch Rename...

• Set up the renaming criteria as required and click Rename

As an additional note, I would be more likely to save as PNG or TIFF, then use Bridge's Image Processor (under Tools > Photoshop) to handle the jpeg conversion, for a better result than working from Acrobat directly.