Convert EMF to PDF (vector)

Question

Is there a Windows program that is able to convert EMF files to PDF while preserving the vector character of the image?

On Windows XP I always used the Image and Fax viewer (which is the best EMF viewer I have ever seen) and printed it to PDF via PDFCreator. Unfortunately the days of XP are gone and the Photo viewer of Windows 7 is not even able to open EMF files.

Until now I have tested a lot of viewers and converters with the following result:

• Windows 7 integrated Photo Viwer -> Can not open EMF
• ImageMagick Windows pre-compiled binary -> raster image
• XnView (print to PDF) -> raster image
• Inkscape -> loading error (distorted, wrong text size & positions)
• Microsoft Office 2010 Photo Viewer -> prints white page
• VeriPDF EMF2PDF converter -> raster image (with wrong text sizes)

What other software are available for converting an EMF to PDF?

Answer 1

LyX can be used to do this, although it may be a little laborious for multiple images. LyX prefers EPS-formatted vector images, so it automatically converts EMF images to EPS, before converting the entire document to PDF.

Alternatively, you could use the metafile2eps.exe tool directly, and then convert the EPS to PDF, without using LyX:

Answer 2

wmf2eps is old and unsupported but might get your data into a form that can more easily be converted to PDF.

At worst maybe you can use Windows XP mode

The new Windows XP Mode lets you run older Windows XP business software right on your Windows 7 desktop.

Designed primarily with small- and medium-sized businesses in mind, Windows XP Mode comes as a separate download and works only with Windows 7 Professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise. Windows XP Mode also requires virtualization software such as Windows Virtual PC. Both are available free on the Microsoft website.

Answer 3

I was able to get this work using Free WMF Viewer and then printing to a PDF driver (Distiller / CutePDF / whatever)

Edit: Apparently that program is GPL'd so someone could in theory get the source code

Answer 4

If you similar with WIN API you can write a console utility which simply draws EMF to PDFCreator virtual printer. As a result you will get good-looking PDF with the vector characters.

I've tried to output EMF to the PDFCreator virtual printer using GDI and GDI+ libraries and in both cases the result PDF was good-looking with the vector characters. GDI+ is more appropriate because resulting PDF has better quality.

Also you can configure PDFCreator in the "Autosave mode". In this case you can get the console utility which can convert EMF to PDF without the user interaction.