Batch Conversion of pdf to tif

[KEG]

I am attempting to batch convert several pdf multipage documents to multipage tif documents. The initial documents are colour documents. We only store our pdf files within our imaging software using black and white, so maintaining colour is not important.

The problem I am having is that the initial colour pdf documents are only 400 - 500 kb files. When converting them to tif, the size increases to 15000 kb files. Additionally, the images lose all of their clarity. The new files are extremely fuzzy.

I've tried playing with multiple settings in the Options and Advanced tabs, but cannot get a workable solution.

My settings in the Options tab are: Save Compression - None, Save all pages from original image, Save palette for grayscale.

My Setting in the Advanced tab are: Sharpen = 1, Blur filter = 1, Median filter =3, Misc: Overwrite existing files, Save files with original date/time, Apply changes to all pages (TIF/PDF saving)

Can anyone point me in the right direction to restore the clarity?

Thanks,
Keith

[eL_PuSHeR]

Blur/median and sharpen are mutually exclusive filters, that is, they do opposite functions. I would leave all filters off and use some form of compression, preferably LZW for backwards compatibility or ZIP for tighter packing.

Another way is to download XPDF and use pdfimages command to extract all bitmaps from PDF. Afterwards, it's very easy to create a new multipage TIFF file.

PDFimages is easy to use. The syntax is:

pdfimages -j <path and source pdf name> <output path and name>

For instance pdfimages -j c:\temp\source.pdf d:\tmp\out

The -j parameter tells to extract bitmaps as JPEGs if they are stored using this lossy compression. Otherwise files are extracted as PBM or PPM (not sure) but they are readable by IV.

[KEG]

Hi El:

Thanks for the assist. I restored LZW and it took care of most of the issue. Color pdf to tif was still about double. Given we only archive in Black white, I turned on grayscale and it kept the file size exactly the same. If I tried BW only the file reduced from 500 kb to 80 but was unclear.

If I have further issues, I'll try your xpdf suggestion.

Regards,

Keg

[eL_PuSHeR]

You are welcome.