58
21
How can I convert about 100 PNGs to one PDF on a Mac? I'm open to using the command line if it helps.
I have tried using iPhoto, but it quits, not sure why. Saving from Preview doesn't quite do what I want. Thoughts?
tekknolagi
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 1 130
78
If you have Leopard (10.5 or later) or Lion the easiest way is to use Preview. Just do the following:
That's it! You should now have a PDF containing all your images.
If that doesn't work for you, you should look at any third-party solutions such as Adobe Acrobat Pro which has a combine feature or PDFLab.
mekwall
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 1 599
1For me in Snow Leopard, File > Print only printed the first image. I had to select File > Print Selected Images in order to print all of them. – kldavis4 – 2014-07-23T21:09:18.023
3Shift-Cmd-D didn't open sidebar for me, I had to explicitly use View -> Thumbnails (option - Cmd - 2) - on mac os x el capitan v10.11.3 - otherwise the instructions worked a charm. – arcseldon – 2016-02-22T03:58:51.227
It's 2018 and this method still works like charm. Thanks for this answer. – Lucio Mollinedo – 2018-06-12T16:27:08.750
1+1 - My suggested solution as well. I've used this method to combine several PDFs by printing, then choosing "Save as PDF" from the print panel. – SplinterReality – 2011-10-25T07:59:11.970
54
I prefer using command line tools such as ImageMagick for this type of work. You can install IM with Homebrew:
brew install imagemagick
Afterwards you can do
convert *.jpg output.pdf
and if the resulting PDF is a bit too big you can try:
convert -quality 60 *.jpg output.pdf
Of course ImageMagick also works on other Unix systems, and even on cygwin.
(If you want a specific order you can also write out the .jpg filenames one by one. Or use * and rename the .jpgs in alphabetical order.)
kqw
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 1 781
after running this command, every image that *.jpg expanded to was overwritten with the first image, and only the final one was saved to PDF – user5359531 – 2016-11-01T18:25:20.983
@user5359531 Strange. For me this has worked perfectly many times before and to double check I just tried it again. No problem. What was the exact command you ran? And which version? convert --version|head -1 gives me Version: ImageMagick 6.9.5-2 Q16 x86_64 2016-07-13 http://www.imagemagick.org – kqw – 2016-11-01T22:48:32.687
how do you order the pages? – JohnnyQ – 2017-01-19T13:43:50.393
1@JohnnyQ Name the image files in the order that you want the pages to appear in the PDF. – coredumperror – 2017-01-23T20:25:58.843
This. It works beautifully, for any aspect ratio - the Print answer above is more of a hack than anything else. – Vlad – 2018-04-03T14:28:58.443
this is the best answer for me – papashou – 2018-04-11T09:08:32.107
7
My method is similar to Marcus's, but works a little better for me when the images are all different sizes and you don't want the PDF to just be all 8.5x11 but to keep each page the size of the original image.
After this we diverge:
Dave
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 86
This method worked very well for me. The Accepted Answer is very convenient, but as @Dave mentioned, doesn't work so well if your images are different sizes. The Accepted Answer's method also results in a margin around the edge of the PDF, presumably because the print dialog automatically adds a bleed edge. Also, Preview allows you to drag and drop all the other PDFs and add them to the first (or last) PDF in one fell swoop. You can also reorder the pages in the resulting PDF by dragging and dropping. – Zkoh – 2015-05-22T03:33:09.887
Doesn't work on Yosemite. Step 2 shows a warning alert and exits the process. – a20 – 2015-09-23T13:40:18.343
2
On more current versions of OSX, you may be better off using the native command line tool sips - see the answered Stack Overflow question 6349984, which converts from pdf to png. It should be far easier to script sips (which has been available since ~2009) than click multiple times within Preview.
Essentially,
sips -s format pdf input-png-file-path --out output-pdf-file-path
Jason
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 21
1
I highly recommend the Python CLI program img2pdf for lossless conversion:
https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/img2pdf
Example usage:
img2pdf img1.png img2.jpg -o out.pdf
Adam Erickson
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 147
0
A much simpler way is to use the rather overlooked app Automator, that you find in the Applications folder.
This link shows exactly how: Use Automator to combine your research photos into one PDF
Lykke Madsen
Posted 2011-10-25T05:51:19.053
Reputation: 1
1Please quote the essential parts of the answer from the reference link(s), as the answer can become invalid if the linked page(s) change. – DavidPostill – 2017-05-02T10:40:44.337
Duplicate question on AskDifferent: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/11163/how-do-i-combine-two-or-more-images-to-get-a-single-pdf-file
– tir38 – 2018-01-03T21:54:25.837