One of the benefits of working as a Mac system administrator at a private school is solving problems. There’s always something new going on.
For example, a teacher wanted to remove an image from a PDF. Another wanted to grab an audio file from a web site. Another wanted to pull a movie from Safari’s cache. Still another needed to extract images from an erased SD card. Another needed all the photos from her email.
What Mac utility does all that? Not many.
A Utility That Does All That
Necessity appears to be the mother of invention, and long before the teachers in my school needed to extract this from that, or squeeze that from this, someone already had the need and the invention.
File Juicer is the Mac app that squeezes stuff from files.
By squeezing, I mean extracting, as in lifting, removing, recovering.
Files often have all kinds of other files embedded inside. Images, photos, text, movie clips, audio clips, music. File Juicer digs into the file itself, finds the actual code for what you want, and pulls out just what you need.
Need a photo that’s embedded into a PDF? Drag and drop and done. Need photos lifted from an erased flash drive or SD card from a camera? Click, click, done.
Using File Juice is an exercise in simplicity. Merely drag and drop the file you want to extract something from, and File Juice immediately goes to work.
When it’s done, File Juice opens a Finder window on your Mac with a folder and all the files it found inside.
From the Preferences (image above), take a look at all the files that File Juicer extracts.
Preferences also determine where the extracted files are stored, and other details.
File Juicer is one of those unique Mac tools which does far more than meets the eye. It’ll pull images from PowerPoint slide shows, extract images and text from PDF files.
For photos, video, audio, and other image files, File Juicer’s list is longer than the US Government’s debt is high.
Drag and drop to remove .jpg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .pict, .tiff files. Do the same for .wav, .mp3, .avi, .mov, .wmv, .mp4, .au, .aiff and much more.
The second most useful function is one that I perform in school every week—pulling photos off erased flash cards and SD cards from student and teacher cameras. It happens.
File Juicer is simple and straightforward. Almost too much so. The only negative is the requirement to dig through the files it creates in the Finder to find the files you want. That can be a bit tedious, but it’s not difficult.


