Caliper Defnition and How to Read Pdf Free Down Load

Many ebook readers natively support PDF documents but, unfortunately, not all PDF documents are easy to read on a pocket-size ebook reader screen. Allow's have a look at ii simple and free ways to convert PDF files for enjoyable reading.

Kindles, Nooks, Sony Pocket Readers, and other popular readers support native PDF rendering. The trouble with native rendering, however, is that many PDF documents are formatted to be read on a large screen or printed and read in difficult copy. Big margins, multiple columns, and other formatting choices that aren't such a big deal when the document in printed on viii.v×eleven paper or displayed on a twenty″ monitor return the document most unreadable when loaded into an eastward-reader with a 6″ screen. Today we're going to look at two ways you can re-format a PDF file for enjoyable reading on your favorite reader.

What You'll Need

For our tutorial yous'll need the following things:

A copy of ebook management software Calibre.
A copy of K2pdfopt.
A PDF file to catechumen.
An e-reader to try the file out on.

Nosotros suggest proceed a make clean copy of your PDF exam file in a separate directory so if all your conversion attempts go awry you'll take the original safe and sound.

Converting Using Calibre

Calibre is an awesome and open up source ebook management tool. If you've read this far and have no intention of fifty-fifty mucking around with any PDF files yous should get and download it regardless. Information technology's a fantastic tool for managing ebooks and ebook readers. What we're interested in, volume management aside, is the conversion tool built into Calibre.

If yous're totally new to using Calibre and need aid installing information technology and getting your books into it, check out one of our previous Calibre-based guides to get started. In one case you've installed information technology and you've loaded upwardly a book you want to convert information technology's time to become converting.

For our case we'll be using a especially circuitous textbook (multiple columns, charts, graphic headers for each affiliate, etc.) and a Kindle. First let's wait at what the original PDF file looks like on the Kindle screen.

That's eye-squintingly minor on a big monitor screen and nearly illegible on a Kindle screen. At that place'south no style we could comfortable read that on a 6″ kindle screen without serious eye strain and a headache. Allow's see if we tin can convert it with Calibre.

Open Calibre and right click on the book. Select Catechumen Books –> Convert individually. Here you'll find an enormously detailed menu with toggles and settings galore. It'southward easy to go overwhelmed and some of the settings are pretty cabalistic if you're unfamiliar with press terms and/or search cord expressions. For the first conversion stick with the default settings and convert between PDF and a suitable format for your ebook reader or even PDF to PDF to restructure multi-column PDF files into a more streamlined document.

When it's done converting you can bank check the formatting on your computer by double clicking on the converted file in the correct mitt volume information column or you can transfer it to your device. We transferred it to the device to get a real sense of how it looked on the page.

Although we've used Calibre to convert hundreds of ebooks over the concluding few years with very few problems this particular PDF file proved to be a real challenge for it. The multiple columns, odd formatting choices, and other factors actually stumped Calibre.

While Calibre unremarkably does a fine job converting PDF files we picked 1 of the well-nigh difficult to catechumen PDFs we had on hand to demonstrate that things don't ever go every bit planned. We also picked a really hard to catechumen PDF and then that we could in plough show off the next tool in our tutorial, K2pdfopt. It'due south like the nuclear selection when the usually reliable Calibre fails to crank out a working conversion. If you discover yourself in a similar boat, your circuitous PDF certificate didn't plough out correct, you'll likely be thrilled with K2pdfopt.

Converting Optimizing PDF files using K2pdfopt

First, we want to give a big thanks to Abhijeet at Guiding Tech; we'd been looking for a tool like this and he tipped us off at simply the correct time. K2pdfopt is designed to optimize PDF documents for small screen due east-readers. Rather than convert the document into raw text and try to reformat it, it instead carefully crops and realigns the pieces as though they were a series of images. The end result is a new PDF file that is really truthful to the original document and free from odd OCR blunders (as information technology doesn't attempt to convert or reflow the text).

Using K2pdfopt is a snap. Extract the executable into a folder, elevate a PDF file onto the EXE and let it work—as seen in the screenshot above. We dropped the same hard to format textbook PDF into K2pdfopt and crossed our fingers. Given how much Calibre struggled with the document we weren't sure what to await. When the conversion completed (you'll see a re-create of your PDF file with the file named annotated similar filename_k2opt.pdf in the K2pdfopt folder) nosotros copied it over to our Kindle and were shocked at how well information technology handled the circuitous text we threw at it.

The text is slightly less crisp than in our PDF to MOBI conversion (see the screen capture in the Calibre section) merely it is all at that place, with proper formatting, and without any screwy OCR errors. Thanks to K2pdfopt we went from having a PDF that was illegible on the Kindle to having a PDF that was every bit piece of cake to read as a clean photocopy.

The only downside we could notice in using K2pdfopt was the increase in file size. A 15MB PDF file, when converted with K2pdfopt, ballooned to 93MB. When you lot consider how few conversions Calibre doesn't properly handle and how few books we'd demand to actually ship through the K2pdfopt paradigm-based conversion procedure, though, information technology's not a bad merchandise off. We can stand to increase the file size on a few PDFs in society to gain access to a portable and easily read copy.

Update: Before long after this commodity went alive on the site Marcus wrote in and asked

What if you lot took the K2pdfopt.exe output and ran the resulting PDF through Calibre over again to catechumen it to a MOBI or ePUB? Possibly that would stop Calibre from choking on the multi-cavalcade format since it would now exist formatted more like a standard book. Could you guys try it out?

What if, Marcus? What if, indeed. We dove in deeper, Inception-style, and performed a test just equally you requested. Calibre handled the conversion beautifully and the text cleaned up perfectly. How perfectly? Here's a snippet of the text seen in the screenshot higher up (which is properly formatted only a little grainy) afterward the reconversion process:

And at that place you have it. For a particularly tricky PDF file you lot can run it through K2pdfopt.exe, then dump information technology back into Calibre for a cleanup pass (check out how smooth the font is at present in the in a higher place sample), and enjoy a totally optimized PDF. Good call, Marcus! The actress step but adds a few minutes to the process and really tidies things upward.

Have a conversion tip, trick, or tool to share? We're interested to hear near it and so shoot us an email at tips@howtogeek.com or sound off near it in the comments here.