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How do I include PDF files as media items in a book?

Family Book Creator has the facility to include pages from PDF (Portable Document Format) format files as images in the Photo Album section for a family.

By default PDF files are not included in a book, because analyzing and including a PDF needs additional computing resources and processing time. To allow the inclusion of pages from a PDF document as images in the Photo Album section of a family PDF files need to be assigned the media category in FTM of FBC_HandleStoryAsImage. By default the first five pages of a PDF document will be included, when the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsImage is assigned to the PDF. Additional media categories can be used to specify how the data from a PDF document will be handled, more on this is provide below.

Note: To create a new category in FTM use the "Add" button in the "Categorize Media" dialog box. A media item can be assigned to any number of categories in FTM. For more information please read "Why and How Do I Categorise Media Items in FTM?".

The following additional media categories specify how the pages or data from PDF documents are going to be handled:

  • FBC_IncludeOnlyFirstPage
    Just the first page of a PDF document will be included in the Photo Album.
  • FBC_IncludeAllPages
    All pages of a PDF document will be included in the Photo Album.
  • FBC_UseOnlyLargestImage (Note: only available in Family Book Creator 2012 and later)
    The largest image found in a PDF document is going to be used. This will avoid large white page borders around a birth certificate, newspaper clipping etc.
  • FBC_UseOnlyImages (Note: only available in Family Book Creator 2012 and later)
    Just all images found in a PDF document are going to be included in the Photo Album.

Please have a look at the following example: By combining the media category FBC_HandleStoryAsImage, FBC_UseOnlyLargestImage and FBC_PhotoAlbum_FullWidth the clip from the newspaper will be display as large as possible in the book’s Photo Album. The header and footer from the PDF document will be omitted, because just the image component is used.

Sample PDF Media Element


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