PRS-500 PDFrasterFarian - makes A4/Letter PDFs usable

[alex_d]

It should NOT be over-writing the original PDF.

It seems there's some big issues with 2.2.0.

I'll let you know when I get this sorted out and when there is a "stable" 2.2.x version available. For now, we can continue discussion in the beta thread. I probably shouldn't have mentioned 2.2 until it's been used by a few people.

I've posted 2.2.1 and am crossing my fingers that it'll work, but we'll see...

[JRAWKER]

Alex, check your PM box!

[astra]

I still get 2KB files

[daiphile]

Please help!
I got the massage 'Evaluation period expired, please contact pdfsupport@pdf-tools.com' while I try to use PDFrasterfarian 2.1.6.
pdcat.exe may cause this problem.
Could I have any solution for this massage?

[Azayzel]

I ran into this message as well, but the output still came out OK (albeit a bit large in size; usually PDFR makes things smaller, not larger )

[daiphile]

I solved the problem below by myself.
Eliminating 'EOF' in the crop_ps.awk works fine!
PDFrasterFaran is a really great tool!
---------------------------------------
Hey, guys.
I have trouble in using autocrop option.
When I turned the option on, I always get blank page only. If it is turned off, I get the converted lrf document but the document is not splitted even though it is set to half or quarter splitting. Please give me a clue to solve the autocroping problem.

Previewing, I got a message as below.
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: EOF
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: ^ syntax error
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: EOF prints;
gawk: C:\Programs\PDFrasterFarian\\modules\crop_ps.awk:1 9: ^ invalid in expression

[alex_d]

Thanks, daiphile, i'll incorporate that fix into the next release. It's weird that this is the first I heard of this error. I hope if I make the change it doesn't cause problems for others.

As for pdcat... despite the message it doesn't seem to affect anything. Don't worry about it, but i'll try to find another tool. This also doesn't affect file size. The LRF comes out larger than the PDF if the PDF didn't have any pictures.

astra_lestat, thanks for the feedback but talk about the beta build on the beta thread.

[Azayzel]

Sorry Alex, but I can't seem to follow you on the filesize question. I'm just a little curious as to how the LRF is larger than the intial PDF when every other conversion has always resulted in a much smaller LRF. I understand that the LRF contains meta data, but does it really double the amount of characters in a given file when the actual text is present in the original PDF; i.e., almost all of my originals were rastered versions prior to PDFR, so didn't contain any actual text.

It's ok if you can't explain it (be tough with what limited info I've provided you with; i.e., the original file), but thought I'd ask anyway. Thanks for the clarification!

[Daft Willie]

PDFRasterfarian is awesome.
I, however, am insane.

I'm using one of the 2.1.x betas...it works great, but do I remember an option where you could manually change the cropping options? Or is that just my crazy broken memory?

Happy reading!

[alex_d]

My LRFs don't contain any characters. When a PDF contains text, that text is turned into PNG images (it is rastered). This enables me to control the quality of font rendering, run post-processing "photoshop" filters, and preserve exact formatting. The images, though, turn out pretty small since they only have 4 colors and limited resolution. If you start with a PDF document that contains lots of pictures (especially high-res color), the end result will turn out much smaller because the information that the Sony Reader can't display gets stripped. However, if the PDF was just text and a few vectors (lines, circles, etc.) then the LRF will come out larger. Of course, given 2gb sd cards it doesn't really matter.


Daft Willie,
Maybe you're thinking of the overlap settings when you use the mode that splits a page four ways. Of course, you can also choose whether or not to do automatic cropping. Manual cropping, however, would be too impractical with a text interface. To do manual cropping I suggest first running the PDF either through Acrobat Pro (what I do) or JAP (which may give you even more control, but it preforms a rasterization step also and the final quality gets reduced a bit). If anyone knows any other PDF manual cropping programs, Please let us know (maybe I can just integrate it into the toolset). Manual cropping will be a big feature of pdfrasterfarian 3.0, whenever that sees the light of day.

[DrSiddons]

Good day all.

I've downloaded PDFrasterFarian 2.1.6. When I install it and run it, it labeled 2.1.4.

I initially tried 2.1.3. This version processed a document, but I couldn't find the final file. I upgraded and when I run 2.1.4, it processes 2 pages and stalls (it could still be processing for all I know). I is definitely taking more time than 2.1.3.

Help!

Dr. S.

[Ncm]

Hi Alex,

Wonder if you could help me. I'm using your wonderful software. But every file I use PDFraster on increases in size dramatically. Thus a 600 K article would go up to about 2.2MB in size while a book 1.2 MB in size would increase to 15MB after the change. Is this normal or am I missing something?

Thks in advance.

[igorsk]

PDFrasterFarian converts all text to images, so the size increase is natural.

[Azayzel]

Yeah, I figured as much. Almost all of my previous uses of PDFR had been on already rasterized PDF's, so PDFR almost always shrunk the file size down quite a bit. The other day I ran it on a PDF that contained the embedded text and when it was done the result was double the original file size. I guess PDF's have some type of built-in text compression that is much greater than simple raster images. I'm going to try feeding the raw content into another program and seek optimal output size vs quality.

I still stand by my opinion that PDFRasterfarian is by far one of the best tools for getting PDF's to look good and perform better on your Reader.

[jakeluck]

ditto