Need some help on how to extract pictures from *pdfs!

[deosaa7]

I'm a physics student and I'm writing a quick report for my advisor of my research progress over the past month. This is my first such report. I have about 20-25 equations from a physics paper which I need to copy into my report to show that I used them. I will of course give the paper credit but I need these exact equations and while I know I can take screen shots with the Mac and edit them down I am wondering if there is a more elegant solution?

When I was using Windows I recall that I could simply highlight a selection in the *pdf and copy it as a picture. Can I do the same thing in preview or somehow in OS X?

Using the equation maker in Word 2011 to recreate these equations will take hours because most of them are very long differential equations with many variables and symbols.

Thanks!

AKD

 

[Jenniflee]

When I was using Windows I recall that I could simply highlight a selection in the *pdf and copy it as a picture. Can I do the same thing in preview or somehow in OS X?

AKD

Do you have Adobe Reader? If the pdf you're using is of the interactive sort, Adobe Reader let's you do that kind of thing. You can just download it straight from Adobe.

 

[SandynJosh]

Here's a quick trick that you can use for any time you want to grab an image:

1. Make the image as large as possible and still fit within your screen. Often, repeatedly hitting CMD+shift+"plus key" will enlarge the image you want to grab.

2. Then press CMD+shift+4. This will change your arrow cursor into a crosshair for selecting the area of the image you want to grab. Once the area has been selected, it will be captured and put on your desktop.

The above will work for just about any image within any program.

 

[benhollberg]

Here's a quick trick that you can use for any time you want to grab an image:

1. Make the image as large as possible and still fit within your screen. Often, repeatedly hitting CMD+shift+"plus key" will enlarge the image you want to grab.

2. Then press CMD+shift+4. This will change your arrow cursor into a crosshair for selecting the area of the image you want to grab. Once the area has been selected, it will be captured and put on your desktop.

The above will work for just about any image within any program.

Look:

I will of course give the paper credit but I need these exact equations and while I know I can take screen shots with the Mac and edit them down I am wondering if there is a more elegant solution?

 

[deosaa7]

Thanks for the replies, I will download Adobe reader although I dislike downloading Adobe products in general because they always are popping up with different upgrade this or that warnings. Brings me back to the horror of buying a Dell and within 1 month of all the trials running out getting to do work took 5 minutes because of all the pop ups from the bundled software.

The command shift 4 works so I can use that but I was hoping for native support from the program itself.

 

[DewGuy1999]

Did you try the Select tool in Preview?