A cross-platform GUI- and command-line converter for [e]ps and pdf.
Siep Kroonenberg,
siepo at cybercomm
dot nl
Current online version of this page
For TeX and its derivatives, eps and pdf are the preferred graphics formats. Epspdf and epspdftk can convert between these, with various conversion options, and can also handle PostScript files which aren't eps files. PSTricks users may appreciate the capability to go from pdf back to PostScript.
Epspdftk is the GUI component, with buttons to select options and with file dialogs for opening and saving files.
Epspdf is the command-line component, which is used by epspdftk but can also be used on its own. It uses Ghostscript, luatex and optionally pdftops to do the real work. Multistep conversions extend the possibilities.
Conversion options include grayscaling, page selection, computing a tight boundingbox and some pdf options.
The third-party LaTeX package epspdfconversion uses epspdf for on-the-fly conversion of eps graphics to pdf, with options to control grayscaling and boundingbox generation. See CTAN or your TeX distribution.
The command-line program epspdf is written in texlua, which is part of recent versions of MikTeX and TeX Live. Versions prior to 0.6 were written in Ruby. Epspdftk, its GUI companion, is written in in Tcl/Tk.
Starting with the 2008 edition, TeX Live includes epspdf in some form as an optional package.
These are the required and optional prerequisites, which will be checked for when epspdf starts:
If you have MiKTeX and a copy of pdftops.exe, then you can point epspdf to this file from within the GUI. You need to do this only once.
If you have a sufficiently recent standalone TeX Live and have a Tcl/Tk installation or runtime, just install the TeX Live package. Otherwise:
Unpack the archive somewhere and create symlinks to epspdf.tlu and epspdftk.tcl in a directory on your searchpath.
This is a conventional Windows installer. If it does not find texlua.exe on the searchpath then it gives a warning and a opportunity to abort. It creates a shortcut to the epspdftk GUI and it also creates an uninstaller.
It installs epspdftk in the form of a so-called starpack, which consists of the epspdftk script and a Tcl/Tk runtime, combined into a single executable. For version 0.6.1, the Tcl/Tk 8.5 runtime is from the KitCreator project. The command-line script epspdf.tlu remains a separate file.
This installer has been created with NSIS.
Download the epspdf zip file, unpack it somewhere and create a batchfile epspdf.bat such as
texlua "<path_to_epspdf.tlu>" %*
for epspdf.tlu, and a batchfile epspdftk.bat
wish "<path_to_epspdftk.tcl>" %1
for epspdftk.tcl. The wish executable might also be named wish85[.exe] or wish86[.exe], or tclkit[.exe] if it is a single-file Tcl/Tk runtime. The first command-line parameter will be interpreted as startup directory for the file browser. Make sure that wish and these batchfiles are on your searchpath.
Epspdf[tk] has been tested with Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Last revised: November 1, 2015