Imagery from US Topo Maps

With a couple command lines, you can convert US Topo Map pdfs into layers that can be used in GIS or to form a basemap that can be used offline.

US Topo 2 Tif  - This PDF is a good resource to have in an offline GIS.

Download the areas of interest from the US GeoPDF Topo Maps.  These are good to have on hand for printing or for loading to mobile apps like Avenza PDF.

The following examples will assume the pdf is called "MN_Grand_Marais_20160511_TM_geo.pdf"

Run the GDAL command:

gdalinfo MN_Grand_Marais_20160511_TM_geo.pdf –mdd LAYERS

This will allow you to see all the layer names.

Then run the GDAL command:

gdal_translate MN_Grand_Marais_20160511_TM_geo.pdf marais_contours.tif \
--config GDAL_PDF_LAYERS "Map_Frame.Terrain.Contours" --config GDAL_PDF_BANDS 3 \
--config GDAL_PDF_DPI 400

You will now have a TIF file that can can be loaded into the open source GIS

There are additional command line options to do compression and other stuff to the outputs.  Check the pdf for more info.