PDF creation command line tool -- Does one exist?

[superboyac]

I have a program that will spit out a tiff, and I want to use some kind of command line tool to quickly take the tiff and convert it to a pdf.  I need it to be command line because I want another program to use it as a parameter as part of a batch process.  Does something like this exist?

[AndyM]

I just googled

    command line pdf maker

looks like there are a few there

[tomos]

http://www.accesspdf.com/pdftk/

* Merge PDF Documents     * Split PDF Pages into a New Document     * Decrypt Input as Necessary (Password Required)     * Encrypt Output as Desired     * Fill PDF Forms with FDF Data and/or Flatten Forms     * Apply a Background Watermark     * Report on PDF Metrics such as Metadata, Bookmarks, and Page Labels     * Update PDF Metadata     * Attach Files to PDF Pages or the PDF Document     * Unpack PDF Attachments     * Burst a PDF Document into Single Pages     * Uncompress and Re-Compress Page Streams     * Repair Corrupted PDF (Where Possible)

pdftk
I have it with a GUI but it is a command line tool (cant remember does it come with GUI)
recommended by various people here

[superboyac]

Nice, very cool.  Thanks.  I'll check it out.

I'm also looking into if pdfcreator has any command line options.  That's also freeware, and a very good free pdf creator.

[lanux128]

you can also try tiff2pdf, which is part of LibTIFF tools.

tiff2pdf opens a TIFF image and writes a PDF document to standard output.

The program converts one TIFF file to one PDF file, including multiple page TIFF files, tiled TIFF files, black and white. grayscale, and color TIFF files that contain data of TIFF photometric interpretations of bilevel, grayscale, RGB, YCbCr, CMYK separation, and ICC L*a*b* as supported by libtiff and PDF.

If you have multiple TIFF files to convert into one PDF file then use tiffcp or other program to concatenate the files into a multiple page TIFF file. If the input TIFF file is of huge dimensions (greater than 10000 pixels height or width) convert the input image to a tiled TIFF if it is not already.

The standard output is standard output. Set the output file name with the −o output.pdf option.

• http://www.remotesensing.org/libtiff/

[Target]

<a href="http://sourceforge.n...projects/pdfcreator/">pdf creator </a> claims to be able to do this, though to be it's not terribly clear how to do it (at least I couldn't work it out in the few minutes I was fiddling with it)

[rjbull]

pdftk
I have it with a GUI but it is a command line tool (cant remember does it come with GUI)

-tomos (February 11, 2009, 07:26 PM)

PDFTK can do all sorts of things with pre-existing PDFs, but I don't think it has PDF creation capability.  It's a command-line tool.  The GUI is a third-party addon, which, last time I looked, didn't cover all of PDFTK's features, just the most common ones.

[tomos]

pdftk
I have it with a GUI but it is a command line tool (cant remember does it come with GUI)

-tomos (February 11, 2009, 07:26 PM)

PDFTK can do all sorts of things with pre-existing PDFs, but I don't think it has PDF creation capability.  It's a command-line tool.  The GUI is a third-party addon, which, last time I looked, didn't cover all of PDFTK's features, just the most common ones.

-rjbull (February 12, 2009, 03:50 AM)

thanks rj - you just beat me to it re it not being the tool for this job

[Edvard]

Lanux128 has the answer. ^^
The Windows version is here: http://gnuwin32.sour...et/packages/tiff.htm

I've used it on occasion and it works well.

[lanux128]

yes the LiBTiff also contains other small tools for dedicated conversion purposes. thanks Edvard for linking to the Win32 binaries.