How to extract images from PDF file in Java

PDF files are not directly supported by Java. This tutorial shows you how to extract images from a PDF file in 5 simple steps using the JPedal PDF library.

Why use a third-party library to handle PDF files?

PDF files are a very complex binary/text hybrid data structure. The image data, color information and scaling details are all stored separately in a compressed format and need to be extracted and combined together.

A third-party library handles all the for you automatically. In this example, we will use our JPedal PDF library to make this task simple.

How to Extract images from PDF files with JPedal?

1. Create a File handle, InputStream or URL pointing to the PDF file

ExtractImages extract = new ExtractImages(path);

2. Include a password if file password protected

extract.setPassword("password");

3. Open the PDF file

if (extract.openPDFFile()) {

4. Iterate over the images on each page

  int pageCount = extract.getPageCount();
  for (int page = 1; page <= pageCount; page++) {
      int imagesOnPageCount = extract.getImageCount(page);
      for (int image = 0; image < imagesOnPageCount; image++) {
           BufferedImage img = extract.getImage(page, 
           image, true);
      }
  }
 }

5. Close the PDF file

 extract.closePDFfile();

JPedal makes it easy to extract clipped images from PDF files

Find out more

Watch how to use our PDF Viewer JPedal