Recently I explained how to exact a single image from a PDF so that the image could be reused in other applications. That method is ideal when you need only an image here and there, but if you need more than a handful of images seemingly locked away inside a PDF, it’s better to batch the extraction.
In Acrobat Professional, choose the menu command Advanced > Document Processing > Export All Images. You’ll be presented with a save-style dialog box entitled Export All Images As. Be careful not to blithely click the Save button out of habit! Acrobat will export all the images in the PDF as the same file type; by default, they’ll all be medium quality JPEGs, which is probably not what you want–at least, not if you’re a designer.
Rather than hitting Save at this point, look at the options in the Save as Type dropdown menu. Your choice is to save all images as JPEGs, PNGs, TIFFs, or JPEG2000s. And, each of those file formats has its own unique quality, color management, and other options you can set. Click the Settings button to change those options. Figure 1, for example, shows the options available when saving images as TIFFs. You can set the individual compression type for monochrome (black and white), grayscale, and color images, choose color management policies, and set the colorspace and resolution for all images.
[Click image to zoom.] Figure 1. Options for exporting all graphics in the PDF as TIFF images.
Pay special attention to the last option in the dialog, Exclude Images Smaller Than. Any graphics in the document smaller than the size you specify in that dropdown field will not be exported. If you need, say, icon-sized images from a technical document PDF, you’ll probably want to set Exclude Images Smaller Than to “No Limit”.
Once your options are set, click OK on the settings dialog, and then Save in the Export All Images As dialog. It might take a few minutes, but Acrobat will export all the images in the document to the location you choose. Then those images are ready for reuse in another application.
Of course, you shouldn’t reuse images from a PDF unless you have permission to do so from the PDF creator and/or copyright holder(s).