Hmmm, what am I doing wrong...

[macjerry:~/Desktop]$ sips -s format pdf FixedColor.jpg --out FixedColor.pdf
/Users/jerry/Desktop/FixedColor.jpg
Error: Not a valid format value
/Users/jerry/Desktop/FixedColor.pdf
[macjerry:~/Desktop]$ sips -s format "pdf" FixedColor.jpg --out FixedColor.pdf
/Users/jerry/Desktop/FixedColor.jpg
Error: Not a valid format value
/Users/jerry/Desktop/FixedColor.pdf


On May 17, 2004, at 10:34 AM, Daniel Staal wrote:

--As of Saturday, May 15, 2004 8:35 AM -0700, Rich Morin is alleged to have said:

I suspect that there are Cocoa frameworks that would let me import
PDF and export JPEG, but I'd rather not go that way if I can help it.

Question:

What's the simplest way to solve this (ie, mechanically convert PDF
files to JPEG (or GIF or ...) format?

--As for the rest, it is mine.

If you are using Panther, you can use Apple's 'sips' commandline program to do this. It is seriously under-documented, but it works well. (Though it doesn't handle transparencies. Not a problem if you are converting to JPEG, which doesn't support them.)

I've successfully used this line in a Perl script to convert images:
`sips -s format $ext $imagefile --out $imagedir 2>&1`
where $ext is the extension of the file type you want to convert to,
$imagefile is the name of the file to be converted, and $imagedir is the directory or output image name.


The only documentation available is from the commandline: type 'sips -h' for usage help and 'sips -H' for lists of properties that are supported.

Daniel T. Staal

(Note: if anyone wants to help *me* use the Cocoa frameworks to do this, I would be grateful. I need to be able to convert tiff/jpeg/gif/pdf/pict/png to a common file format (png or gif), preserving transparency and color balance. So far I've not had luck on Mac. I think I could convert pure Cocoa code to Perl...)

---------------------------------------------------------------
This email copyright the author.  Unless otherwise noted, you
are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use
the contents for non-commercial purposes.  This copyright will
expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years,
whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of
local copyright law.
---------------------------------------------------------------




Reply via email to