Recover Embedded Photos and Graphics from Client-Supplied PDFs
Clients send final PDFs but not the original assets. When a rebrand or resized campaign requires the photos from a previous brochure and the original Dropbox folder is long gone, Deliteful extracts every embedded image from the PDF as a separate file — no Acrobat Pro required.
Asset recovery from client-supplied PDFs is one of the most common and most tedious problems in design production. A client approves a new brochure layout and asks to reuse the hero photography from last year's annual report — but the original TIFFs are not in any shared folder anyone can find. Screenshot workarounds produce low-resolution images unsuitable for print or even web use. The images exist at full embedded resolution inside the PDF; the challenge is getting them out without manually screenshotting each page.
Deliteful extracts embedded images in their original embedded format, at the resolution they were placed into the PDF. This is not a screenshot or screen capture — it pulls the actual image data stored inside the file. At 1 credit per PDF, recovering a full set of product photos from an old catalog costs less than a minute of billable time. Note that vector graphics and drawn shapes are not extracted; only raster images embedded in the PDF are output as separate files.
How it works
- 1
Create a free Deliteful account
Sign in with Google in 3 clicks — no credit card required.
- 2
Upload the PDF containing the images
Select the client brochure, catalog, or report that has the embedded photos you need to recover.
- 3
Run the extraction
Deliteful identifies and extracts every embedded raster image in the document as a separate file.
- 4
Download the extracted image files
Your recovered assets are ready to open in Photoshop, place in InDesign, or hand off to the client.
Frequently asked questions
- Will extracted images match what I see on the PDF page, including any cropping applied in the layout?
- Not always. Images are extracted as stored inside the PDF, which may be the full uncropped original even if only a portion was visible on the page. A photo cropped to show only a face in the layout may extract as the full portrait. This is actually useful — you get the complete image asset, not just the cropped portion.
- What resolution will the extracted images be?
- Extracted images are output at the resolution they were embedded in the PDF. If the original was placed at 300 DPI, the extraction will be 300 DPI. If a previous workflow downsampled images during PDF export, the extracted files will reflect that downsampled resolution — Deliteful recovers what is in the file, it does not upsample.
- Can I extract images from a print-ready PDF/X file?
- Yes. Deliteful works on any valid PDF including PDF/X variants. Embedded raster images are extracted regardless of the PDF standard used to create the file.
- Will vector logos and icons be extracted?
- No. Vector graphics, drawn shapes, and SVG-style elements are not extracted. Only embedded raster images — photos, placed TIFFs, JPEGs, PNGs — are output as separate files.
Create your free Deliteful account with Google and recover the embedded assets from your next client-supplied PDF in seconds.