I took a bunch of screenshots and I want to make them pages in a single PDF. Selecting all four in Preview and exporting to PDF only exports two (?), separately. The "Export to PDF" File menu function adds a strange white border around the screenshots (and orients the page as portrait). So I converted each to PDFs individually and then combined them manually. I tried the solutions here, but Mavericks' Preview doesn't appear to work that way anymore. What's the best, free, hopefully built-in way to automate this?
asked Nov 1, 2013 at 23:26 6,312 20 20 gold badges 53 53 silver badges 76 76 bronze badgesYou can use the convert command if you install ImageMagick. ImageMagick isn't always a simple install, but if you install Xcode and Homebrew it should be fairly painless.
convert *.png foobar.pdf
answered Nov 2, 2013 at 0:06 663 4 4 silver badges 11 11 bronze badgesThere is an Automator action - New PDF from images. It creates a single multi-page document from input images. You can create a workflow or app that would process your images that you drop onto it.
If I create an application in Automator with that single action, I can drop my images onto it, and it'll create a PDF with one page per image.
answered Nov 2, 2013 at 2:19 9,680 3 3 gold badges 23 23 silver badges 43 43 bronze badgesPreview's "Export As PDF. " places the converted image onto the default paper size, e.g. A4 or US Letter. That's why you get the "strange white border" around the image.
Using Preview's "Export. " menu item, and selecting PDF as the format will merely convert the image to PDF without placing it on a page.
Apple's Automator action "New PDF from Images" works well, but suffers from Automator's limitations in where output files can be saved.
A python script that will combine images (supplied as arguments) into a PDF file can be found here. It can be used in an Automator "Run Shell Script" action to create a Quick Action/Service.