39

Is there any tool in some PDF Viewer/Editor like Acrobat, Evince, etc. where I can navigate and watch coordinates(i.e. (x,y)) of any selected point in PDF-document?

Nova
  • 2,623
  • 4
  • 26
  • 45
Michael Z
  • 3,883
  • 10
  • 43
  • 57
  • 2
    Isn't gsview capable to show mouse coordinates? – khachik Jan 23 '12 at 12:14
  • 3
    Coordinates according to which coordinate system? As you surely are aware, coordinate systems are very flexible in content streams. – mkl Jun 09 '15 at 17:09

11 Answers11

28

Apache PDFBox PDFDebugger 2.0.* displays PDF coordinates in the status bar. Get it here: https://pdfbox.apache.org/download.cgi

Download the pdfbox-app-2.0.*.jar available under command line tools on above link. Then run the below command with the required file.

  java -jar pdfbox-app-2.0.*.jar PDFDebugger "InputFile"

You would be able to see the coordinates by hovering the mouse on pdf page. You can select a particular page from left hand side and corresponding page will be displayed on right. Note pdf displays coordinates from lower left of the page so if you want to extract some text using these coordinates you need to subtract the y axis from the total height and then use it. In case of below example you will have to use x:47 y:(792-522)=270

enter image description here

The 3.0.0 version has a few extra features unrelated to this question: https://repository.apache.org/content/groups/snapshots/org/apache/pdfbox/pdfbox-debugger/3.0.0-SNAPSHOT/

Gaurav Parek
  • 317
  • 6
  • 20
Tilman Hausherr
  • 17,731
  • 7
  • 58
  • 97
16

I've found that Gimp is perfect for this! It even has different units of measure, so this is my choice

Michael Z
  • 3,883
  • 10
  • 43
  • 57
  • 19
    But Gimp is completely unaware of the original PDF coordinate system (which starts in the lower left of each page and uses units of 1/72th inch), so beware what kinds of coordinates you're talking about! PDF does not know or care about pixel coordinates. Gimp only knows pixel coordinates and has a different coordinate system than the original PDF (starting at the top left). – David Oct 28 '15 at 09:12
  • 3
    "If you want to have the x,y coordinates start at the bottom left, you can flip the image vertically. Everything will be upside down, but it is all a matter of perspective." - from [here](https://coderwall.com/p/3h8nog/view-real-time-pdf-coordinates) – caiolopes Feb 08 '17 at 19:06
  • 1
    @David what would you recommend to get the real pdf coordinates? – user32882 Dec 03 '21 at 15:09
  • 1
    When I wrote that comment 6 years ago, I think I was using Acrobat Pro. There are some other good suggestions in the other answers and comments. – David Dec 07 '21 at 09:53
9

To explain @michael Z's answer, I found the following works:

These steps are for paint.net, but most image manipulation programs like The Gimp should be similar:

  1. open the pdf up in reader.
  2. screenshot it.
  3. paste into paint.net
  4. choose image > flip vertical.
  5. choose view >show rulers.
  6. Also tick pixels.
  7. Resize image to use inches and be 8.5 x 11 (if it's American letter) and 72 DPI.

Now use the rectangle select tool. The image is upside-down, so the upper-left of the tool is the lower-left for the .pdf and the lower right is the upper-right for the .pdf.

FYI - In Paint.Net, the bottom toolbar always shows the xy coordinates of the cursor.

It makes your eyes a bit squiffy to read documents upside-down for while, but at least you can now get a pretty good estimate of the locations on the document!

I found this description helpful too

Lanceomagnifico
  • 1,293
  • 15
  • 22
  • 3
    You can do the resizing a lot easier using pdftojpg.me (by setting the DPI value to 72). No need to screenshot, copy-paste etc. individual pages, you get a correctly sized JPG file for every page, although you still need to do the flip vertical step manually. Also no need to download / install anything. – Attila Csipak Jun 12 '18 at 12:09
8

Also good old GhostView (gv) shows coordinates. enter image description here

Yotam
  • 808
  • 8
  • 10
6

  1. CanOpener is a very impressive tool for working with PDF files. It operates as a plugin for Acrobat Pro - http://www.windjack.com/product/pdfcanopener/

  2. Another option would be to use the Foxit Phantom PDF Advanced Editor which allows you to select objects and see the properties of each object.

  3. You could use a library such as Quick PDF Library to render the image to a BMP file and then write yourself a little TOOL to scroll and zoom around the BMP file reporting back coordinated. http://www.quickpdflibrary.com - (Note : I do consulting work for Quick PDF)

  4. I am sure you could load the PDF into Adobe Illustrator and get the current coordinates in the status bar.

Andrew

Andrew Cash
  • 2,321
  • 1
  • 17
  • 11
  • 5
    Well, thanks, but all your tools are not FREE. I've found that Gimp is perfect for this! It even has different units of measure, so this is my choice – Michael Z Jan 24 '12 at 09:17
  • 8
    If you want FREE tools then you should specify FREE in your question. – Andrew Cash Jan 24 '12 at 13:44
4

If you are trying to do this without using Acrobat Pro because it not free, here is how you can do it. 1. download and install Acrobat Pro (yes seriously) 2. activate the trial version. if you already did this, it's okay 3. once the trial is done you will lose a bunch of tools from Acrobat, but you will definitely not lose the cursor coordinate tool

here is how to use it 1. go to the main menu strip, click view, and select show/hide 2. from here you can select cursor coordinate and voilà

amr_elshafei
  • 51
  • 2
3

I use InkScape v 0.91 to map out PDF rectangles for extracting text. It can load a PDF into the canvas. Don't forget to change the measurements to inches (Ctrl-Shift-D) with the document open for the document properties. For the Page property tab set the Default Units to inches, for the Grids property tab set Grid Units to inches. This page, PDF coordinates, explains the PDF coordinate system, and its unit of measurement.

voidmain
  • 1,521
  • 1
  • 12
  • 14
3

I was looking for a tool to get the co-ordinates to use extract option available in PDFBox library. Gimp way worked well for my purpose. I opened the PDF in Gimp and set the measuring unit to points.

Parthi
  • 123
  • 1
  • 7
2

In case you don't want to install any heavy software for such a trivial task, you can create annotations in a xfdf file, set their location and then see which area is annotated in PDF.

You can use this template:

<xfdf xmlns="http://ns.adobe.com/xfdf/" xml:space="preserve">
    <annots>
        <square style="solid" width="4" color="#000000" opacity="1" creationdate="D:20190624111403Z" flags="print" date="D:20190624111403Z" page="0" rect="0,0,135,390.6" subject="ROI" title="ROI" />
    </annots>
    <pdf-info version="2" xmlns="http://www.pdftron.com/pdfinfo" />
</xfdf>

Change the coordinates of the "rect" attribute, save the file as xfdf. Then, as you open the xfdf file in Adobe reader, the reader will ask for the location of the PDF file. Locate the PDF document, and you will see the rectangle drawn at the specified coordinates.

Timorgizer
  • 59
  • 2
0

There is ImageMagick which is lighter than Gimp and gives you coordinates along your mouse pointer.

Umair A.
  • 6,690
  • 20
  • 83
  • 130
-9

Adobe Reader has it.

Edit->Analysis->Geospatial Location Tool

A T
  • 13,008
  • 21
  • 97
  • 158
  • 1
    When I choose this I get little window with empty Latitude, Longitude labels that are not changed while me point mouse over document :( – Michael Z Jan 23 '12 at 12:44
  • 1
    This tool is only useful for [Geospatial PDF files](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geospatial_PDF). – yms Jan 23 '12 at 15:29