Converting raster-based PDFs to Vector based

[StephenAE]

Hello Everyone,

I was look round for a programme to allow me to convert raster-based PDFs to vector-based, as the EMF created when printing is very large. and I found inkscape. What I read about it lead me to believe that it would be able to convert my PDFs.

I have installed it (v0.92) and loaded a PDF. It was 7 pages and inkscape only loaded one page. I just assume this is a limitation and can live with that. I then tried saving it in PDF format. I turned off "Rasterise filter affects" and saved, but it did not save the page in vector format.

The programme looks very good and I may well use it for other things in the futre, now that I have found it, but for now I just need to be able to find a solution to printing large PDFs across a network, which means I need to convert them to vector-based. I know I can by-pass EMF and print directly to the printer, but this is not a solution, just a work-around.

So, my questions are; Will this programme allow me to load raster PDFs and save them as vector? and if so, how?

Thank you.

[brynn]

Welcome to the forum!

It won't be able to do it simply by re-saving the PDF.  But it should be do-able.  Possibly the "very large" part could be troublesome.  But maybe not.

You'll need to open each page in Inkscape separately, select the raster contents, and do Path menu > Trace Bitmap.  Being large, it might take several seconds to a minute or 2, to finish the trace.  Then save as PDF again.

Inkscape does have an extension to handle multiple pages, which I think it accomplishes via PDF.  Oh, it looks like there are 3 extensions.  I've never used them, so I don't know which one might be better.

Multiple Pages - probably the oldest of these 3
Multi-Page PDF Export
MultiPage Export - more info