How to Convert PDF to TIFF Using Linux

By Chris Hoffman

Updated April 06, 2018

PDF, or Portable Document Format, files are a file format created by Adobe. PDF files display the same on every computer, no matter what operating system or PDF reader version that computer has. TIFF, or Tagged Image File Format, files are a widely-used type of image file. TIFF files use lossless compression, which means that there's no loss in image quality, but they are significantly larger than lossy image formats such as JPEG. Convert a PDF file to a TIFF file using Linux's standard "convert" command.

Open a Terminal window. Click "Applications," "Accessories" and "Terminal" on Ubuntu. Click "Applications," "System Tools" and "Terminal" on other Linux distributions.

Navigate to the directory containing the PDF file with the "cd" command. For example, navigate to the Documents directory by typing "cd Documents" into the Terminal window, then pressing "Enter."

$ cd Documents

Convert a PDF file to a TIFF file using the standard "convert" command. Type "convert" in the Terminal window, press "Space," type the name of your PDF file, press "Space," type the name of a tiff file, and press "Enter." For example, convert a PDF file named "example.pdf" to a TIFF by typing "convert example.pdf example.tiff" into the Terminal window and pressing "Enter."

$ convert example.pdf example.tiff

Tips

Convert PDF files and other image files to other image formats using the "convert" command by specifying different output formats. For example, convert a PDF to a JPEG file by typing "convert example.pdf example.jpeg" instead.

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