Portable Document Format (PDF). PDF was developed by the Adobe Corporation to allow the exchange and viewing of electronic documents easily and reliably, independent of the environment in which they were created. This format lets you compress large documents to a size small enough to download very quickly. It is also becoming a powerful format for reproducing documents over the web.
The PDF Filter can:
- Save to the PDF v1.2, v1.4, and v1.5 file formats.
- Save to the PDF/A format
- Load files through PDF v1.6 (and may be able to load PDF v1.7 or later)
The following table summarizes the filter's capabilities:
| PDF Version | Read | Write Flags |
| PDF v1.2 | Supported | No flags |
| PDF v1.3 | Supported | N/A |
| PDF v1.4 | Supported | SavePdfv14 |
| PDF v1.5 | Supported | SavePdfv15 |
| PDF v1.6 | Supported | Read only |
| PdfA | Supported | SavePdfA |
By default, the filter saves to PDF v1.2. Save to the PDF/A format by setting the SavePdfA property. Use the SavePdfv15 property to save the PDF file as a PDF v1.5 file. Use the SavePdfv14 property to save the PDF file as a PDF v1.4 file.
In LEADTOOLS version 16 and later , the PDF Filter supports saving PDF/A format. To save files as PDF/A, use the SavePdfA property. PDF/A does not support all compression formats (see http://www.pdfa.org/doku.php?id=artikel:en:pdfa_a_look_at_the_technical-side for more details). Therefore you cannot use this flag in conjunction with RasterImageFormat.RasPdfLzw.
The PDF Filter loads AI (Adobe Illustrator) files from version 7 to version 10, which only have PDF data.
This filter can also save large images by setting the LowMemoryUsage property. In addition, this filter can load JBIG2 compressed PDF files. It can both load and save PDF files that are JPEG CCITT, CCITT G3 2D, or CCITT G4 compressed, or are uncompressed.
Note: JBIG2 is only available for PDF 1.4 or later.
This filter can load files that are stored in memory (memory files). In addition, it supports an option that disables the cropping of files, by setting the DisableCropping property, and an option that disables the use of CIE colors, by setting the DisableCieColors property. Disabling the use of CIE colors will result in faster loading of PS files.
PDF support is included with the LEADTOOLS PDF Plug-in which is an add-on module for all LEADTOOLS Toolkits* and extends support for PostScript, EPS, and PDF formats.
*The PDF Plug-in is not available to add onto LEADTOOLS Multimedia.
The file constants associated with this file format are:
| Constant | Read Support | Write Support | Description |
| RasPdf | Yes* | 1, 2, 4, 8, 24 BPP | Raster PDF uncompressed. |
| RasPdfCmyk | N/A* | 24 BPP | Raster PDF with CMYK support. |
| RasPdfG31Dim | N/A* | 1 BPP | Raster PDF with G3 1D Compression. |
| RasPdfG32Dim | N/A* | 1 BPP | Raster PDF with G3 2D Compression. |
| RasPdfG4 | N/A* | 1 BPP | Raster PDF with G4 Compression. |
| RasPdfLzw | N/A* | 1, 2, 4, 8, 24 BPP | Raster PDF with LZW Compression. |
| RasPdfLzwCmyk | N/A* | 24 BPP | Raster PDF with CMYK support and LZW Compression. |
| RasPdfJpeg | N/A* | 8 BPP (Grayscale) 24 BPP | Raster PDF with JPEG 4:4:4 Compression. |
| RasPdfJpeg422 | N/A* | 24 BPP | Raster PDF with JPEG 4:2:2 Compression. |
| RasPdfJpeg411 | N/A* | 24 BPP | Raster PDF with JPEG 4:1:1 Compression. |
| RasPdfJbig2 | N/A* | 1 BPP | Raster PDF with JBIG2 Compression |
Required DLL: Leadtools.Codecs.Pdf.Dll. The files required for reading PDF and writing PDF are different. For a listing of the exact DLLs needed, based on the toolkit version, refer to Files To Be Included With Your Application .
*NOTE: When you request file information on a PDF file, RasPdf will always be returned for the file format, regardless of the composition of the PDF file. LEADTOOLS can read PDF documents that are made up of both text and images. The text and images are rasterized into one raster image for each page of the document. LEADTOOLS can write PDF documents that are made up of raster images only.
Related Formats: PS - PostScript Document Format, RTF - Rich Text Format.
Platforms: .NET 2/3, .NET 4, Silverlight, Silverlight Windows Phone (NOTE: For Silverlight / Windows Phone, only raster write is supported).
NOTE: LEADTOOLS also supports writing the PDF file format using the LEADTOOLS Document Writers. For more information on the LEADTOOLS Document Writers SDK, refer to Introduction.