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Page.get_images_info() is returning empty array. Need a reliable way to detect non-text PDF pages #5017
Description
Description of the bug
Hi Team,
i have page where
- page.get_images_info() is returning empty array whereas pymupdf4llm.to_markdown is giving 2 page blocks with class 'picture'
- page.get_text() is returning null.
PFA pdf file.
Thanks of the support.
How to reproduce the bug
Run below python code
import pymupdf
import pymupdf4llm
input_path = "<path_to_file>"
doc = pymupdf.open(input_path)
for page in doc:
print(f"text {page.get_text()}")
image_infos = page.get_image_info(xrefs=True)
print(f"page number {page.number} image_infos : {image_infos}")
documentText = pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(doc,page_chunks = True)
print(f"document text : {documentText}")versions:
PyMuPDF 1.27.2.2
pymupdf-layout 1.27.2.2
pymupdf4llm 1.27.2.2
PyMuPDF version
1.27.2.2
Operating system
MacOS
Python version
3.14
Activity
JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 10, 2026
This discrepancy as such is no bug.
If the layout module classifies a page region as "picture" then this does not mean it has found an image there. It might as well be vector graphics which are no images and thus do not show up when you try to extract images!
What appears to be text on that page in reality are vector graphics that mimic text. Identifying them as "picture" therefore is at least not far from the truth.
One could argue that mimicked text should be OCR-ed ... and this is indeed what is built into the page analyzer module.
However: there exists no bullet-proof way to tell apart text mimicry and general vector drawings. Therefore some probability / plausibility checks are used based on image properties of the rendered page (FFT analysis, Sobel gradients, edge energy and more). Our guiding principle here is to avoid unnecessary OCR signals because OCR is a performance hog. If in doubt do not OCR.
If you run
pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(...)with the optionforce_ocr=Truethe text will be OCR-ed successfully (assuming at least Tesseract is usable on your machine).julian-smith-artifex-com commentedon Jun 10, 2026
Also note that
page.get_drawings()will return the content.manikantaaddagatla commentedon Jun 11, 2026
Hi @JorjMcKie and @julian-smith-artifex-com,
Thanks for the quick reply. As you mentioned, OCR has been disabled for performance reasons, but that does not solve my issue. I will change title slightly
My core logic is roughly:
From what i understand, my current logic only detects images. I need a way to identify all non-text PDF pages, including pages that use vector graphics to render text-like content.
so could you please share a code snippet that I can use to reliably detect non-text PDF page?
[-]Page.get_images_info() is returning empty array[/-][+]Page.get_images_info() is returning empty array. Need a reliable way to detect non-text PDF pages[/+]JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 11, 2026
Your "bug" example: is this a non-text page for you?
manikantaaddagatla commentedon Jun 11, 2026
Please correct me if I am wrong, but
page.get_text()is returning an empty string, even though I can see text in the PDF. Based on this behaviour, I am considering this a non-text page.JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 11, 2026
All right then: simply do
if (page.get_text()).isspace(): # no text on page.Empty strings and strings only containing white space (include line breaks etc.) count as: "this page has no text".
manikantaaddagatla commentedon Jun 11, 2026
That would solve for this particular PDF. However, as I mentioned above, my core logic (with a minor correction) needs to be more generic. I need a reliable way to determine whether a page contains images or vector graphics that visually represent text, so that I can process such pages differently from pages containing extractable text.
I'll correct my non text page definition - page has text (optional) + (images or vector graphics that visually represent text)
JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 11, 2026
You are visiting the same points again: there is no way to determine this without OCR!
manikantaaddagatla commentedon Jun 11, 2026
Understood. Can I use an approach like this?
If a page contains any block that occupies a significant portion of the page and is not classified as text or table, can I treat the entire page as an image page and process it?
My apologies for prolonging this discussion, but this is very critical for us because we do not want to miss any extractable data from a page.
JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 11, 2026
If this is so you have only two options left:
force_ocr=True. The analyzer will not be executed and every page will be sent to an OCR engine.The available OCR plugins for Tesseract and RapidOCR all perform what I call "hybrid OCR". They respect existing page text and only OCR the "rest" of the page. This works whether or not you are using the page analyzer. The result is a mixture of extractable text and text added by the OCR engine.
The modified page is then sent to the Layout module which makes sense of all that.
JorjMcKie commentedon Jun 11, 2026
For clarity, I am going to move this post to the "Discussions" tab.