PDF to JPEG in Preview App Big Sur 75 inches bug
The new OS Big Sur has destroyed the option of exporting PDF files to JPED in good quality. The maximum quality is 75 inches. Apple, please fix this. A very useful function that became unusable!
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The new OS Big Sur has destroyed the option of exporting PDF files to JPED in good quality. The maximum quality is 75 inches. Apple, please fix this. A very useful function that became unusable!
Only the macOS Product team can fix internal Preview build issues, and there is no user fix for it ignoring DPI in image exports from PDF. That product team does not participate here, so if you want them to know there is an export issue, send them detailed feedback.
At this time, continue to use the Automator solution you have been using, or my Terminal solution if you want.
Only the macOS Product team can fix internal Preview build issues, and there is no user fix for it ignoring DPI in image exports from PDF. That product team does not participate here, so if you want them to know there is an export issue, send them detailed feedback.
At this time, continue to use the Automator solution you have been using, or my Terminal solution if you want.
It does seem to be a bug in Preview.
As a workaround, I found that the corresponding action in Automator does NOT suffer from this bug, so I was able to create a quick Automator application to convert pdf to jpeg with a given resolution.
Save it anywhere you like, and drag and drop files to convert. I checked the box "Show this action when the workflow runs", so you can even change the resolution and file type every time you run it.
This saves the created file on the Desktop, but you can choose a different location, of course. It also rewrites without warning; you may want to turn that off, for safety.
You mean 75dpi?
I will have to check in a few minutes when I get back to my mac but I’m pretty sure I could use higher values. The options available may depend on the file you have. Maybe you have a pdf file that was itself obtained from a low resolution jpeg? Did you try with a pdf known to contain vector data?
Thank you for your quick reply! I wish it was dpi, but somehow Big Sur uses inches or pixels as a resolution unit. Well, at least in my German version. Yes, I did try to export a vector PDF to jpeg and the result was exactly the same. The quality gets destroyed since it can only export a maximum of 72 inches/pixels. Not 75, I'm sorry. So, the resolution of the exported jpeg is always 1.178x1.682.
Oh wait... I see. While I can choose any resolution I want, it does NOT get reflected in the created file.
In fact, resolution is not the big deal, the problem is that the picture dimensions are not set appropriately.
There is always the Terminal to do the PDF to JPG conversion right, where y is the value returned for pixelHeight in the sips -g all command. The formatOptions value is the JPG quality.
man sips
sips -g all foo.pdf
sips -Z y -s dpiHeight 300.0 -s dpiWidth 300.0 -s format jpeg -s formatOptions 100 -o foo.jpg foo.pdf
The resulting foo.jpg will have the same dimensions as the PDF and will be confirmed by the Preview Inspector to be 300 DPI.
Automator also has a PDF to image action where you can set the DPI and the output image type. Makes a nice drag and drop PDF to image solution.
Thank you for your helpful reply, Viking OSX. The terminal solution was new to me. I've previously used the Automator for batch PDF to JPEG exports. Would still be nice to get it working through the normal user interface, since most of the time it's just one PDF file that needs exporting.
That is not what I'm seeing here. I wrote 300, but I could have written 600, or whatnot.
Sure, it is possible to enter any resolution at this point, but the result of the exported image is always the same: 72 pixels.
Thank you for the detailed explanation, Luis. Let's hope the next update will get it fixed directly in the Preview app.
I see. All right, thank you, I will send them a detailed feedback then. That'll have to do for now.
PDF to JPEG in Preview App Big Sur 75 inches bug