Insert Image to PDF Document in Java using Apache PDFBox

Introduction

In this tutorial we will learn how to create a PDF document using Apache PDFBox libary in Java and then insert an image to a PDF document page.

Apache PDFBox Overview

The Apache PDFBox is an open source library for working with PDF documents in Java. You can get more information about the project at pdfbox.apache.org

Adding Apache PDFBox Dependencies

Adding below dependencies to build.gradle file if you are using Gradle build tool.

compile group: 'org.apache.pdfbox', name: 'pdfbox', version: '2.0.18'

Adding below XML to pom.xml file if you are using Maven build tool.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.pdfbox</groupId>
    <artifactId>pdfbox</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.18</version>
</dependency>

Or you can download the pdfbox-2.0.18.jar file from pdfbox.apache.org/download.cgi

Step 1 - Creating empty PDF document

try(PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {
			
} catch (IOException e) {
	e.printStackTrace();
}

Step 2 - Adding new empty page to PDF document

PDPage page = new PDPage();
document.addPage(page);

Step 3 - Insert Image to page

For example we have an image file located at D:\SimpleSolution\simple_solution.png

PDPageContentStream pageContentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);
PDImageXObject imageXObject = PDImageXObject.createFromFile("D:\\SimpleSolution\\simple_solution.png", document);
pageContentStream.drawImage(imageXObject, 100, 400);
pageContentStream.close();

Step 4 - Save PDF document

document.save("D:\\SimpleSolution\\ImageDocument.pdf");

Complete Application Source Code

package dev.simplesolution;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.graphics.image.PDImageXObject;

public class InsertImagePdfDocument {
	
	public static void main(String... args) {
		try(PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {
			PDPage page = new PDPage();
			document.addPage(page);
			
			PDPageContentStream pageContentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);
			PDImageXObject imageXObject = PDImageXObject.createFromFile("D:\\SimpleSolution\\simple_solution.png", document);
			pageContentStream.drawImage(imageXObject, 100, 400);
            pageContentStream.close();
			
			document.save("D:\\SimpleSolution\\ImageDocument.pdf");
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		
	}

}

Execute the application above you will get the ImageDocument.pdf file as below.

Insert Image to PDF Document in Java using Apache PDFBox

Make the image in the center of PDF page

To insert the image at the center of PDF page we need to calculate x-coordinate and y-coordinate when draw the image based on image size. For example the Java code below to insert the image to center of PDF page.

package dev.simplesolution;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDDocument;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPage;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.PDPageContentStream;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.common.PDRectangle;
import org.apache.pdfbox.pdmodel.graphics.image.PDImageXObject;

public class InsertCenterImagePdfDocument {
	public static void main(String... args) {
		try(PDDocument document = new PDDocument()) {
			PDPage page = new PDPage();
			document.addPage(page);
			
			PDPageContentStream pageContentStream = new PDPageContentStream(document, page);
			PDRectangle mediaBox = page.getMediaBox();
			PDImageXObject imageXObject = PDImageXObject.createFromFile("D:\\SimpleSolution\\simple_solution.png", document);
			float startX = (mediaBox.getWidth() - imageXObject.getWidth()) / 2;
            float startY = (mediaBox.getHeight() - imageXObject.getHeight()) / 2;
            pageContentStream.drawImage(imageXObject, startX, startY);
            pageContentStream.close();
			
			document.save("D:\\SimpleSolution\\CenterImageDocument.pdf");
		} catch (IOException e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		
	}

}