Do you have a map in PDF and you don't know how to transform it into raster? You could print it, scan it with a scanner large enough to contain all the maps or scan it in pieces. Time required for this operation? More hours any costs if you have to contact a third party for scanning.
There is however a more efficient method quick and cheap but which gives us a perfectly usable raster, I'll explain it below.
What we need:
- pdf to rasterize;
- GIMP, open-source graphics program (like Photoshop but free!);
- patience (conditio sine qua non!).
Let's get started!
Let's start GIMP, in this tutorial I will use version 2 of the photo editing program. At this point we click on File, then Open... and look for the folder that contains our PDF. We select the file and then click on Open.
It will open at this point a window (see image Step 3 - Step 4), in Open page as we choose Images, then in Resolution we enter 250,000 in order to obtain a raster with a good resolution. Remember that the weight of the produced file is directly proportional to the image resolution!
Now we can click on Import. We will then obtain our image which in this case must be straightened with the appropriate GIMP tools that can be selected from the bar to the left of the image to be processed.
We're almost done! At this point we just have to create our raster. Let's go to the menu File, then on Export as... then we give a name to our raster without forgetting the extension, we choose the destination then select the image file type (.tiff) and click on Export.
It will open the window present in the following image, in Compression we click on None, then we click on Export.
We're done, here's our former PDF now turned into a raster! The weight of the final file is remarkable, almost 100 MB I preferred to upload only the screenshot but I assure you that the image has a good resolution! Now you know how to transform a PDF into a raster.
Another method for conversion is the one that involves the use of PDF Creator, free and intuitive software that allows you to convert PDF to raster.