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PDF Ripper

Screenshot of PDF Ripper GUI

Use this code to rip a PDF from a desktop textbook app by automatically looping through your textbook, taking a screenshot of each page, and combining the screenshots into a PDF. This project was created to allow annotating a textbook within an iPad note-taking app.

Installation (for non-techy people)

Standalone ready-to-run executable files. Just download and run. No knowledge of Python required.

Extra Steps on Mac

You need to grant the program permission to record your screen and control your mouse/keyboard. Find these settings at:

  • System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Accessibility
  • System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Screen Recording You will likely need to try running the application before PDF-Ripper shows up under these settings.

Installation (from source code -- for techy people)

1. Install Python3

Check if you already have it installed or if you installed it successfully with the python3 --version command in your Terminal / Command Prompt. Install at least version 3.10.

2. Download this repository

Download this repository (i.e. git clone https://github.com/jalexw/pdf-ripper.git). Or hit the big green button and download as a ZIP archive.

3. Install dependencies

Follow either approach 3a or 3b. I prefer the pipenv approach, but the pip approach is likely easier as it should come bundled with your Python and not require

3a. Install pipenv and run the virtual environment defined in the Pipfile

I installed pipenv using Homebrew on Mac with the command brew install pipenv

Set the repository to be your active directory (i.e. cd pdf-ripper), and run pipenv install to download all required packages defined in the Pipfile. If installing dev dependencies (such as pyinstaller for bundling the app as a standalone executable) use the --dev flag.

3b. Install dependencies with pip

Run pip install -r Requirements.txt

If the command pip isn't found, try replacing with something like: pip3, python3 -m pip

4. Running the program

After installation, use pipenv run start to start the application. Use pipenv run dev for additional logging if you're trying to add a feature or troubleshoot.

If you're using pip instead of pipenv, run:

python3 PDF-Ripper.py

Alternatively, with additional logging:

python3 PDF-Ripper.py --dev

Known Errors

  • If you get an error on Mac related to tkinter, see this StackOverflow post. You may need to use Homebrew to install python-tk to fix the problem on Mac, brew install python-tk.
  • On Windows you may need to set up an alias for python3 to use python. Alternatively, change the scripts in the Pipfile to use python instead of python3.

Using the GUI

1. Open your textbook desktop/web application

  • Open your textbook viewing app to the textbook you would like to extract/rip.

2. Resize your browser window to get the screenshots as big as you can

  • Note: Screenshots must be taken on your primary monitor. However, it is convenient to have a second monitor where the GUI doesn't block the textbook. Otherwise, minimize the window after starting the rip and selecting the screenshot area.
  • Resize the textbook to be as large as possible.
  • Play around with zooming in/out.
  • You can open your browser's developer tools menu (Usually 'Command + Option + I' on Mac) to resize the textbook page better. Some textbook providers don't allow you to right click such that you can open Developer Tools; however, you can do this from the menu in the top right corner of Google Chrome (or with 'Command + Option + I' on Mac).

3. Start PDF Ripper Application

4. Input settings for PDF ripping

  • Enter the start/finish page here.
  • Enter whether coordinates of screenshot area should be doubled (see this issue for more details). It seems like some computers need to have the coordinates doubled, while others don't. Try both and see what works for you.
  • Choose an output directory to save the PDF in.
  • Choose how long to wait after going to a new page to take a screenshot. If you have slow internet you might want to give the app time to load the page so your PDF doesn't end up with loading screens in it
  • Select the region on your screen that should be screenshot. You do this by hovering your mouse over the top left corner and the bottom right corner of the area that should be screenshot after pushing the respective button.
  • Finally, hover your mouse over the page selection menu at the bottom of the page to tell the script where it should type in new page numbers to go to the next page.

5. The script takes control of your device

  • Hit 'Start Ripping'
  • On Mac, a pop-up should ask you to allow the script to record your screen and use accessibility services ( to control keyboard/mouse). You may need to restart the program after giving it permission, so do a test run first before actually trying to rip a textbook.
  • The script will take control of your mouse and keyboard while it loops through the pages and takes screenshots for the PDF! Don't touch anything while it works its magic!
  • Screenshots are combined into a PDF file at your chosen output location

To-do

  • Create GUI from original PDF ripper script
  • Create standalone executables
  • Test on Linux
  • Make text in PDF screen reader friendly
  • Auto-crop page after screenshot to allow extracting textbooks with different sized pages

Contributing

Tested on Mac and Windows. Contributors welcome! Feel free to make a PR :)