Author Topic: Looking for a "virtual scanner' software in one pass, outputting in PDF. (Read 32,626 times)

MerleOne · « **on:** February 21, 2012, 02:31 PM »

Hi,

I am looking for a virtual printer software such as doPDF, cutePDf, etc. except that the result of the output from this virtual printer would be a pdf identical to one generated by a scanned copy of the original document (no text inside, just a picture per page).
Do you know any software that does it, in one pass only ?

Thanks.

mouser · « **Reply #1 on:** February 21, 2012, 02:35 PM »

i'm not sure i understand what you are asking for.

MerleOne · « **Reply #2 on:** February 21, 2012, 02:45 PM »

Let say I have a word document. I want to create a PDF from this word document, that would look as a printout of the document, except I don't want it to be "structured", I want the pdf to be equivalent to the one created by a scanner (hardware + software) after I print the .doc to paper and scan the printed paper to a pdf.

In such cases, the pdf doesn't contain text but only images.

mouser · « **Reply #3 on:** February 21, 2012, 02:51 PM »

Ok i understand now what you want.

Perhaps a simpler way to say it is:

"I want to be able to print from an application (MS Word for example) to PDF -- but with each page stored as an image, so that no text is stored or recoverable from the PDF file."

MerleOne · « **Reply #4 on:** February 21, 2012, 03:12 PM »

Exactly, thanks !

I currently do the following : I use the Office Document Image Writer virtual printer to convert a .doc into a .tif, then irfanview to convert the .tif into a pdf, but there are 2 annoyances :

1/ 2 steps are required
2/ the output quality (tif to pdf) is quite poor (maybe a setting in an irfanview plugin ?)

Edited : the reason I want to use an image format rather than a text format is to avoid any possible error when converting the .doc file to the .pdf format, such as font missing and substituted by another one, etc. . So far, all "regular" word to pdf software show a few errors here and there. I really want a 100% perfect copy within the pdf, whatever font/text/image is used in the source document.

AndyM · « **Reply #5 on:** February 21, 2012, 06:17 PM »

I googled "print to jpg" just out of curiousity, several things there.

If you could print directly to a jpg or tiff (with no loss of quality), may be you could write a script to send the graphic output to a pdf maker etc.

MerleOne · « **Reply #6 on:** February 21, 2012, 10:35 PM »

Quote from: AndyM on February 21, 2012, 06:17 PM

I googled "print to jpg" just out of curiousity, several things there.

If you could print directly to a jpg or tiff (with no loss of quality), may be you could write a script to send the graphic output to a pdf maker etc.

Thanks, I'll look into it.

Curt · « **Reply #7 on:** February 21, 2012, 11:31 PM »

Quote from: MerleOne on February 21, 2012, 03:12 PM

2/ the output quality (tif to pdf) is quite poor (maybe a setting in an irfanview plugin ?)

yes, re-check your settings. The quality can be surprisingly good, if you set them to be.

Edited:

This first gif screenshot made the long way from docx printed to tiff, converted via IrfanView to pdf:

---------------------
Screenshot of the original docx:

Innuendo · « **Reply #8 on:** February 22, 2012, 12:30 AM »

There are lots of programs (some pay & some free) that install a PDF printer driver. Just print from inside the app of your choice & the output goes to a PDF file rather than to a physical printer.

4wd · « **Reply #9 on:** February 22, 2012, 01:36 AM »

Quote from: Innuendo on February 22, 2012, 12:30 AM

There are lots of programs (some pay & some free) that install a PDF printer driver. Just print from inside the app of your choice & the output goes to a PDF file rather than to a physical printer.

But most of them output to PDF in the format they were given, ie. text document input->text PDF output, image input->image PDF output

I think what MerleOne wants is no matter what the input, the PDF will always contain just images - what PDF Image Printer, (not free and not cheap), does.

NigelH · « **Reply #10 on:** February 22, 2012, 02:33 AM »

PriPrinter can do this (not free though)
The Standard version does - with full bitmap output support (including multiple pages per file if target file is tiff )
The Pro version adds PDF support, but I could not see if it supports complete bitmap formats inside the PDF file (i.e. no embedded fonts/images, only the bitmap equivalent)

MerleOne · « **Reply #11 on:** February 22, 2012, 08:10 AM »

Thanks all, will look into it !

Curt · « **Reply #12 on:** February 22, 2012, 08:46 AM »

Quote from: 4wd on February 22, 2012, 01:36 AM

I think what MerleOne wants is no matter what the input, the PDF will always contain just images - what PDF Image Printer, (not free and not cheap), does.

-perfect for the job MerleOne described, but as you said, certainly "not free".
I am almost in a coma: $130 without support ($175 with support) ? !!!!

MerleOne · « **Reply #13 on:** February 22, 2012, 09:56 AM »

Regarding PDF Image Printer, I am trying to install it within sandboxie, but it fails so far. I have to find another test machine... Will Try PriPrinter too...

MerleOne · « **Reply #14 on:** February 22, 2012, 09:59 AM »

Quote from: Curt on February 21, 2012, 11:31 PM

2/ the output quality (tif to pdf) is quite poor (maybe a setting in an irfanview plugin ?)
...
yes, re-check your settings. The quality can be surprisingly good, if you set them to be.
...

Thanks. You are referring to irfanview plugin settings ?

Curt · « **Reply #15 on:** February 22, 2012, 02:49 PM »

-yes. The first image in my first post was made exactly how you said:

Quote from: MerleOne on February 21, 2012, 03:12 PM

I currently do the following : I use the Office Document Image Writer virtual printer to convert a .doc into a .tif, then irfanview to convert the .tif into a pdf,

4wd · « **Reply #16 on:** February 23, 2012, 12:15 AM »

Here's a little single purpose program in AutoIt that will:
a) monitor a directory for .TIF or .TIFF files
b) call nconvert to output a PDF when it sees one

eg. test.tif -> test.pdf

Put it in a directory along with nconvert.exe, (available from here).

Call it from the CLI, (you can close the CLI afterwards), like so: ncfet2p <dir>

The archive contains the executable, source, UDF and example.

Basically just a butchered version of the example script in the archive.

You can exit it using the context menu on the tray icon, (standard AutoIt icon).

NOTE: I tested it on XP using the x86 version of nconvert.exe but I don't see a reason why it shouldn't work on Vista/7 x86/x64.

Feel free to do what you like with it, change it to use IrfanView, (which I don't use), or something else but remember: If it formats your drive, I wasn't anywhere near it

Should mention, it will overwrite any existing PDF of the same name and it doesn't delete the original TIF.

UPDATE: Pops up a ToolTip for a few seconds when it start a conversion, (just to let you know it actually recognised a file).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #17 on:** February 23, 2012, 12:37 AM »

Quote from: NigelH on February 22, 2012, 02:33 AM

PriPrinter can do this (not free though)
The Standard version does - with full bitmap output support (including multiple pages per file if target file is tiff )
The Pro version adds PDF support, but I could not see if it supports complete bitmap formats inside the PDF file (i.e. no embedded fonts/images, only the bitmap equivalent)

I use priPrinter Pro and the PDF is structured - not a bitmap.

The only options I can see are:

[attach=#]

So you can't change the format of the output in the PDF (also checked the application options - no PDF options at all in there)

NigelH · « **Reply #18 on:** February 23, 2012, 02:21 AM »

Thanks for the info Carol.
I wonder if Pelikan Software considered this might be a useful feature for PriPrinter

MerleOne · « **Reply #19 on:** February 23, 2012, 07:44 AM »

Quote from: Curt on February 22, 2012, 02:49 PM

-yes. The first image in my first post was made exactly how you said:

Ok, thanks. My question was also : where do you change the settings ?

MerleOne · « **Reply #20 on:** February 23, 2012, 08:00 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on February 23, 2012, 12:37 AM

I use priPrinter Pro and the PDF is structured - not a bitmap.

Thanks for the info and for the link !

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #21 on:** February 23, 2012, 09:26 AM »

Can I ask why you want to do this? I find the structured nature of PDFs very useful and single image files a bit of a PITA. IS there a reason why the bitmap approach would be widely needed?

Ath · « **Reply #22 on:** February 23, 2012, 09:46 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on February 23, 2012, 09:26 AM

IS there a reason why the bitmap approach would be widely needed?

Copy protection?, but I'm also quite curious about the OP's answer

tomos · « **Reply #23 on:** February 23, 2012, 09:48 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on February 23, 2012, 09:26 AM

Can I ask why you want to do this? I find the structured nature of PDFs very useful and single image files a bit of a PITA. IS there a reason why the bitmap approach would be widely needed?

Quote from: MerleOne on February 21, 2012, 03:12 PM

Edited : the reason I want to use an image format rather than a text format is to avoid any possible error when converting the .doc file to the .pdf format, such as font missing and substituted by another one, etc. . So far, all "regular" word to pdf software show a few errors here and there. I really want a 100% perfect copy within the pdf, whatever font/text/image is used in the source document.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #24 on:** February 23, 2012, 09:59 AM »

Fair enough - but in some editors (acrobat?) you can embed the fonts you need to avoid this problem.

The problem with bitmap versions is if you want good quality printable versions of multipage documents they will get very large.