ImageMagick/Ghostscript overwrites first page of PDF file

Question

I have a strange behavior starting today after I upgraded to Ghostscript 9.15 and ImageMagick 6.9.0-4. I am trying to convert some multi-page PDF files to multiple JPEG files.

The problem is that the first page of the PDF file (the 0 JPG file) is overwritten by the software with the last page of the PDF file. For example, launching the command:

 convert -verbose -define jpeg0 -thumbnail x400 -flatten \
   -background white /uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf  \
   /small0115/54b534908aa9b_%d.jpg

Would get me all pages, except the first one, which is the replaced by the last one.

An output for the -verbose option prints as follows for this 52 paged PDF file:

/uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf[0] PDF 694x1224 694x1224+0+0 16-bit sRGB 944KB 0.000u 0:00.000
.......
/uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf[50] PDF 694x1224 694x1224+0+0 16-bit sRGB 944KB 0.000u 0:00.000
/uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf[51] PDF 694x1224 694x1224+0+0 16-bit sRGB 944KB 0.000u 0:00.000
/uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf=>/small0115/54b534908aa9b_0.jpg PDF

As far as I can see, the software automatically writes the first page again, but uses the last page to do so, instead of leaving it as it is.

A workaround to this problem is to generate the first page of the file again, but then this is just a workaround, and not a viable solution for a programmer :)

Answer 1

Try this command:

convert                        \
  -verbose                     \
   /uploads/54b534908aa9b.pdf  \
  -thumbnail x400              \
   /small0115/54b534908aa9b.jpg

The resulting files will automatically get numbered as 54b534908aa9b-0.jpg , 54b534908aa9b-1.jpg , 54b534908aa9b-2.jpg ... 54b534908aa9b-51.jpg .

---

^Remarks:

1. _{I do not understand what your -define jpeg0 parameter is supposed to achieve. Is this a typo?}

2. _{Also, -flatten does not have any effect (Ghostscript -- used by ImageMagick to process the PDF into a raster file, which IM can then handle -- cannot handle PDF layers anyway.)}

3. _{Also -background white will not have any effect: if the PDF pages have a colored 'background', the resulting JPEG will have the same color background. If the PDF pages have a transparent background (most common for PDFs), then the JPEG file format cannot handle it, and the background will appear white...}