For image extraction: pdfimages took 0.9 seconds vs. Acrobat’s 7 seconds. The performance delta is dramatic, especially on older hardware or in batch scenarios.
Corrupted or partially damaged PDFs often crash modern readers. xpdf’s older, more tolerant parser sometimes extracts data where others fail. It’s a standard tool in digital forensics. xpdf-tools-win-4.04
pdftotext -v
Despite these, for 99% of PDFs (especially those generated by standard office or printing workflows), xpdf-tools perform flawlessly. For image extraction: pdfimages took 0
To run these tools from any Command Prompt or PowerShell window: xpdf-tools-win-4.04