Conquer Club

I know there are people in CC who are far more computer-savvy than myself. Hell, there are people shambling around attempting to eat brains who are more computer-savvy than myself.

So here's my problem:
I bought a bunch of old books scanned in as a PDF.
They contain lots of illustrations (all in the public domain) which I'd like to use some of for a project.
But the entire books are scanned in as images, not as text - hence the PDFs are all page images.
I tried converting a PDF to Word, but that didn't work.
I have managed to extract individual illos (ie the page image), but for some reason only in an OXPS format.
I can't import OXPS format images into anything else.
I've tried renaming the file in Word (which I know works for XPS files, I did it for some ancient stuff written vis the older "Works" program.
But trying to do this with the OXPS file is giving Word conniptions - after 20 minutes it's still just flashing at em, and taskmgr tells me that it's only using 0- 0.7% of the CPU to do it.
Now the low-tech version is to print the damn things out, scan 'em back in and then work with 'em, but that means losing resolution and spending hours cleaning up smudgy bits.
Oh, yes, the illos I'm interested in will all be b&w eventually, though they're scanned in colour. This bit I can cope with, and it'll shrink the file size too.

Can you just use snipping tool?

Search "convert oxps to jpg" gives a lot of results.

mrswdk wrote:Can you just use snipping tool?

No, that doesn't appear to be available in the PDF or the OXPS.
I tried to open the OXPS in Paint.net which I often use for working with pics, but it doesn't recognise the file type.
Nor does GIMP.
Nor does the Windows Paint program.
I can't even get Fresh paint to try.

I "printed " an image to One Note, where I could see it, and draw on it, but not crop or erase.

Fontographer?

GoranZ wrote:Search "convert oxps to jpg" gives a lot of results.

Excellent suggestioin. I searched for several variations of "open OXPS, but hadn't tried "convert". This seems to be the ticket.

jonesthecurl wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Can you just use snipping tool?

No, that doesn't appear to be available in the PDF or the OXPS.
I tried to open the OXPS in Paint.net which I often use for working with pics, but it doesn't recognise the file type.
Nor does GIMP.
Nor does the Windows Paint program.
I can't even get Fresh paint to try.

I "printed " an image to One Note, where I could see it, and draw on it, but not crop or erase.

Snipping tool is a Windows thing. If you're running Windows then you'll have it.

HitRed wrote:Fontographer?

So far as I can see, that's exactly the opposite of what I need here (for the purposes of the project, I'm not at all interested in the text), though it does look interesting in its own right. Thanks for bringing it to my attention - I never heard of it before.

mrswdk wrote:

jonesthecurl wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Can you just use snipping tool?

No, that doesn't appear to be available in the PDF or the OXPS.
I tried to open the OXPS in Paint.net which I often use for working with pics, but it doesn't recognise the file type.
Nor does GIMP.
Nor does the Windows Paint program.
I can't even get Fresh paint to try.

I "printed " an image to One Note, where I could see it, and draw on it, but not crop or erase.

Snipping tool is a Windows thing. If you're running Windows then you'll have it.

This fun - that's v useful too. Having a bit of difficulty with some aspects right now, but I'm sure I'll get over them.

...at the moment, whenever I open the snipping tool, it closes the screen i want to snip from.

If the images are in the public domain, have you tried searching online for them? Might be easier to download jpegs than try to convert pdf.

spurgistan wrote:If the images are in the public domain, have you tried searching online for them? Might be easier to download jpegs than try to convert pdf.

Yes i found some of 'em, but otherws are a bit obscure - in public domain by virtue of age.