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Extract an entire image, without splitting it into smaller ones #5120
Description
Hello,
To extract images from a PDF, I use the code according to your readme (see Recipes -> Extract all images from a PDF). But instead the entire upper image (see page 4 of the attached file), I receive 15 smaller ones, with various icons and black rectangles being treated as separate images.
In the other attachment, I showed the entire image I would like to extract. Note that the image area has some text layer bboxes. I partially highlighted the text layer to make the situation clear.
Is it possible in PyMuPDF to extract this image entirely and not to add smaller images included in the entire image area to the result? If yes, what code / which options should I use? If not, why?
Activity
JorjMcKie commentedon Sep 16, 2026
As the displayed text on the page suggests: there is no such thing as the "entire image" - it is a cognitive artifact created by the mind of the viewer - i.e. by you.
Technically, there exists a mixture of text, vector graphics and images in that region. And even viewers may have different opinions about what we are looking at: maybe two "images" - each of the yellow regions being a separate one?
These are all separate pdf objects. There exists no information whatsoever that they semantically belong together.
If you extract the page with pymupdf4llm you will probably (haven't confirmed it yet) find that its layout function has classified the area as a "figure" and saved it like a screen print using the Pixmap of the area.
JorjMcKie commentedon Sep 21, 2026
Moving this
Discussionsbecause no library issue is present.