PDF Comparator uses Mac OS X's built-n ability to render PDF files to compare two PDFs, page by page, and pixel by pixel. It then displays the results in an intuitive and easy to understand display. Compare the difference between two PDF files! Enter two PDFs and the difference will show up below.
I need to compare large count of PDF files for it optical content. Because the PDF files was created on different platforms and with different versions of the software there are structural differences. For example:
- the chunking of text can be different
- the write order can be different
- the position can be differ some pixels
It should compare the content like a human people and not the internal structure. I want test for regressions between different versions of the PDF generator that we used.
casperOneclosed as not constructive by Flexo♦, casperOneFeb 17 '12 at 19:46
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10 Answers
Because there is no such tool available that we have written one. You can download the i-net PDF content comparer and use it. I hope that help other with the same problem. If you have problems with it or you have feedback for us then you can contact our support.
EpagaThere is actually a diffpdf tool.
Its weakness is that it doesn't react well when additions make new text shift partially to a new page. For instance, if old page 4 should be compared to the end of page 5 and the beginning of page 6, you'll need to shift parameters to compare the two slices separately.
I've used a home-baked script which
- converts all pages on two PDFs to bitmaps
- colors pages of PDF 1 to red-on-white
- changes white to transparent on pages of PDF 2
- overlays each page from PDF 2 on top of the corresponding page from PDF 1
- runs conversion/coloring and overlaying in parallel on multiple cores
Software used:
- GhostScript for PDF-to-bitmap conversion
- ImageMagick for coloring, transparency and overlay
- inotify for synchronizing parallel processes
- any PNG-capable image viewer for reviewing the result
Pros:
- simple implementation
- all tools used are open source
- great for finding small differences in layout
Cons:
- the conversion is slow
- major differences between PDFs (e.g. pagination) result in a mess
- bitmaps are not zoomable
- only works well for black-and-white text and diagrams
- no easy-to-use GUI
I've been looking for a tool which would do the same on PDF/PostScript level.
Here's how our script invokes the utilities (note that ImageMagick uses GhostScript behind the scenes to do the PDF->PNG conversion):
akaiholaHow To Compare Two Pdf Files For Differences
akaiholaI don't seem to be able to see this here, so here it is: via superuser: How to compare the differences between two PDF files? (answer #229891, by @slestak), there is
(build steps for Ubuntu Natty can be found in get-diff-pdf.sh)
As far as I can see, it basically overlays the text/graphics of each page in the pdf(s), allowing you to easily see if there were any changes...
Cheers!
sdaauWe've also used pdftotext (see Sklivvz's answer) to generate ASCII versions of PDFs and wdiff to compare them.
Use pdftotext's -layout switch to enhance readability and get some idea of changes in the layout.
To get nice colored output from wdiff, use this wrapper script:
akaiholaakaiholaI think your best approach would be to convert the PDF to images at a decent resolution and than do an image compare.
To generate images from PDF you can use Adobe PDF Library or the solution suggested at Best way to convert pdf files to tiff files.
To compare the generated TIFF files I found GNU tiffcmp (for windows part of GnuWin32 tiff) and tiffinfo did a good job. Use tiffcmp -l and count the number of lines of output to find any differences. If you are happy to have a small amount of content change (e.g. anti-aliasing differences) then use tiffinfo to count the total number of pixels and you can then generate a percentage difference value.
By the way for anyone doing simple PDF comparison where the structure hasn't changed it is possible to use command line diff and ignore certain patterns, e.g. with GNU diff 2.7:
Mac Os Compare Files
This still has the problem that it doesn't always catch changes in generated font names.
Our product, PDF Comparator - http://www.premediasystems.com/pdfc.html' - will do this quite elegantly and efficiently. It's also not free, and is a Mac OS X only application.
Based on your needs, a convert to text solution would be the easiest and most direct. I did think the bitmap idea was pretty cool.
You can batch compare pdf files with Tarkware Pdf Comparer. But it's not free and requires Adobe Acrobat.