Code Sample: Convert Tiff to PDF in Java using flate, JBIG2 or JPEG compression

A Java program that converts a TIFF file into a PDF document using Qoppa’s library Java PDF image library jPDFImages.

TIFF images cannot be inserted directly into a PDF, so we have to read them into an image object and then recompress.

Using Flate Compression

This sample below is the simplest way to convert a multi page tiff into PDF using the PDFImages.appendTIFFAsPage method. Currently (as of v2017R1), the appendTiffAsPages will use the “flate” compression which is loss-less but might result in PDF files that are bigger than the original TIFF.

import com.qoppa.pdfImages.PDFImages;
public class TIFFToPDF 
{
    public static void main (String [] args)
    {
        try
        {
            PDFImages pdfDoc = new PDFImages();
            pdfDoc.appendTIFFAsPages("input.tif");
            pdfDoc.saveDocument("output.pdf");
        }
        catch (Throwable t)
        {
        	t.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Download source code TiffToPDF.java

Using JBIG2 or JPEG Compression

You can also use a different method, PDFDocument.appendImageAsPage() which allows you to set the type of compression.

The sample below reads the images in your code and then passes each image into this method. It uses Java ImageIO to read the images in the TIFF file and the makes calls to the appendImageAsPage() method. When calling the method, we tell it to use JBIG2 compression, this compression works only on black and white images (same as most TIFFs) but produces better compression that TIFF compression. This will only work for black and white tiff. Othewise, you should use JPEG compression (which will work for both color and black and white TIFF images.

// Create new PDF document
PDFDocument pdf = new PDFDocument();
 
// Get ImageIO Tiff image reader
Iterator<ImageReader> rs = ImageIO.getImageReadersBySuffix("tiff");
if (!rs.hasNext())
{
 throw new PDFException ("no reader for TIFF files.");
}
ImageReader tiffReader = rs.next();
 
// Start reading the TIFF file
FileInputStream inStream = new FileInputStream("input.tif");
tiffReader.setInput(ImageIO.createImageInputStream(inStream));
int numImages = tiffReader.getNumImages(true);
 
// Loop through all the pages / images in the TIFF file
for (int pageIx = 0; pageIx < numImages; ++pageIx)
{
  // Get DPI from the image
 int [] dpi = new int [] {72, 72};
 
 // Get image metadata
 IIOMetadata metadata = tiffReader.getImageMetadata(pageIx);
 if (metadata != null)
 dpi = getImageDPI(metadata);
 
  // Create a page from the image using JBIG2 compression
  pdf.appendImageAsPage(tiffReader.read(pageIx), ImageCompression.COMPRESSION_JBIG2, ImageColorSpace.COLORSPACE_RETAIN, dpi[0]);
}
 
// Save the resulting PDF document
pdf.saveDocument("output.pdf");

Download Source Code AddTIFF.java

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