Batch convert TIFF images to PDF?

Question

Are there any free utilities that will batch convert TIFF files to PDF? I've tried PDF printers like PrimoPDF & CutePDF, but these seem to require a GUI click to confirm each filename.

What I'm after is a script, command line or context menu utility that would allow the conversion of hundreds of files using the same filename (save extension, natch) as the original file and placing the output in the same folder.

Edit: I should've stated Windows only!

Answer 1

You can try ImageMagick. I'm trying this on Linux, but it's available for Windows as well. I just have to type: convert example.tiff example.pdf and I get a PDF. With just a little batch magic, you should be able to easily convert a directory of tiff files to pdf.

Or, if you need all tiffs in the same PDF, you can do convert example1.tiff example2.tiff example.pdf.

Answer 2

The tiff2pdf mentioned in Bobby's answer is probably part of libtiff, and you can get Windows binaries through the GnuWin32 project. The Cygwin environment probably includes a libtiff package as well, though I haven't verified. Both Cygwin and GnuWin32 versions are free software.

Davince Tools (sic) includes a scriptable commandline tiff2pdf utility for Windows. This is a shareware toolkit.

Dreamsys Software also provides a Tiff-to-PDF converter (download). This appears free to use.

Answer 3

Using ImageMagick as follows should also work:

convert ^
   c:\your\current\directory\*.tif ^
   c:\your\output\directory\allimagestogether.pdf

Answer 4

Since tiff2pdf is now deprecated, ImageMagick is probably the best option, however a few extra options are needed so I am documenting this here in case anyone else is trying to figure out how to switch from tiff2pdf to ImageMagick.

In order to reproduce what tiff2pdf used to do for full colour scanned documents, some of these extra options are needed:

magick -compress jpeg -quality 75 -units PixelsPerInch -density 300x300 -define pdf:title= -define pdf:author= output.pdf

• -compress matches tiff2pdf's -j option, if you were using it
• -quality matches tiff2pdf's -q option (to set JPEG quality as a percentage, lower values compress more, higher values look better)
• -units PixelsPerInch and -density are required in order for the PDF page size to display properly. 300x300 should match your image density (e.g. if you scanned the image at 600 dpi then specify -density 600x600)
• -define will remove some metadata that ImageMagick adds to the PDF. You can specify values here if you still want the fields but want to set them to something else. If you omit the -define that removes the document title, the PDF title will be set to the input filename, so you'll see the original filename even if later you rename the PDF file to something else.

You can confirm this is all correct by using the pdfinfo utility. If you run pdfinfo output.pdf check the "Page size" value, it should be something like 842.04 x 595.32 pts (A4) where the page size is shown in brackets (A4, Letter, etc.) If you haven't set the -density value properly, the page size won't appear in brackets, and you'll likely have problems if anyone ever tries to print the PDF as it may come out on the wrong paper size (e.g. on A3 paper instead of A4 if the printer has trays for both) or complain that the document won't fit on any paper in any of the printer's trays.

Answer 5

There seems to be plenty of solutions out there for this. At least I found one for Linux which is called tiff2pdf and should be available through your software channel.