Convert PDF to PNG

PDF to PNG turns each page into a lossless PNG image. That is the right choice when the PDF contains text, tables, charts or line drawings: PNG keeps the edges of letters and thin lines perfectly crisp, while JPG leaves faint noise around them that becomes visible when you zoom in or place the image on a colored background.

Typical uses:

• dropping a slide, chart or table into a presentation, a Word document or a wiki;
• sharing one page of a PDF in a chat app or on social media, where a PDF can't be attached;
• building documentation or a tutorial with page images that are sharper than screenshots;
• editing a page further in an image editor.

If the PDF consists of photos or scanned pages, PDF to JPG produces much smaller files with no visible difference.

PDF page sizes are measured in points, where 1 point is 1/72 of an inch. A US Letter page is 612 × 792 points and an A4 page is 595 × 842 points. The image size in pixels is points × DPI ÷ 72, rounded down.

The number of pixels grows with the square of the DPI: a 300 DPI image has four times as many pixels as a 150 DPI one, and a 600 DPI image sixteen times as many. File size grows roughly the same way. A text page saved as PNG is typically 100 to 400 KB at 150 DPI, 300 KB to 1.5 MB at 300 DPI and 1 to 5 MB at 600 DPI. A page full of photos can reach 5 to 15 MB at 300 DPI as PNG; for those, switch to JPG.

With Transparent background switched on, the empty parts of the page become transparent instead of white. That is what you want when the image will sit on another background: a logo from a brand guide placed on a website header, a chart dropped onto a colored slide, a signature or stamp placed on another document.

How does it work? A PDF page has no real background color; viewers paint a white sheet under the content. Leave that sheet out and only the text, lines and images remain, with everything else transparent. Two things follow from this:

• Vector content (PDFs saved from Word, Excel, Illustrator or a design tool) works perfectly. Even the anti-aliased edges of letters and lines blend smoothly into the transparency.
• Scanned or photographed pages don't become transparent, because the whole page is a single image that includes the color of the paper. To remove the background from such a page, use a background remover on the PNG.

How much DPI does a transparent PNG need? Work back from the size the image will have where you use it. A logo that is 2 inches wide in the PDF becomes 300 pixels wide at 150 DPI, fine for a normal web header. For high-density (retina) screens, double it and use 300 DPI. Use 600 DPI only when you need to enlarge a small detail a lot, such as a tiny seal or the label on a technical drawing.

Transparent PNGs are often smaller than white-background ones, because empty areas compress very well, but text-heavy pages can come out slightly larger because of all the anti-aliased letter edges.

You need the charts from pages 3, 7, 8 and 9 of a 24-page report for a PowerPoint deck shown on a 1920 × 1080 projector.

1. Drop the PDF and type 3, 7-9 in the pages box. The tool converts pages 3, 7, 8 and 9: four images.
2. Choose 150 DPI. A landscape Letter page becomes 1650 × 1275 pixels, a little more than the projector shows, so the charts stay sharp.
3. Click Convert. The four PNGs download in one ZIP file, with the page number in each file name, so they stay in order.

If you only need part of a page, crop the PNG afterwards with the image cropper. Working from a 300 DPI image keeps the cropped detail sharp even when it is enlarged on the slide.

A brand guide arrives as a PDF. The logo on page 2 is about 2.4 inches wide, and you need it 720 pixels wide on a dark blue website header.

1. Type 2 in the pages box.
2. Work out the resolution: 720 pixels ÷ 2.4 inches = 300 DPI. Choose 300 DPI.
3. Switch on Transparent background and convert.
4. Crop the logo from the PNG with the image cropper and, if needed, resize it to exactly 720 pixels.

The result is a crisp logo with no white box around it on the dark header. If the logo was vector artwork in the PDF, its edges stay smooth. If the designer pasted it into the PDF as a picture with a white background, that white rectangle survives; in that case ask for the original SVG or transparent PNG.

PDF to PNG always saves whole pages. To go further, continue with the image tools, which also run in your browser without uploading:

• Crop a chart or table out of the page with the image cropper.
• Make the file smaller for a website or email with the image compressor, or convert photo-heavy pages to JPG.
• Hit an exact pixel size when a platform asks for, say, a 1200 × 630 image.

If you want the original photos embedded in the PDF rather than pictures of whole pages, extract images from PDF returns them at their original resolution, without re-rendering.

• Expecting a transparent background from a scan. Transparency only appears where the page is truly empty. A scanned page is a full-page picture, so it stays white or grey.
• Choosing a resolution that is too high. 300 DPI for a 100-page PDF means 100 images of 1 to 2 MB each, easily 150 MB in total. For screens, 150 DPI is plenty.
• Trying to edit the text in the image. A PNG is a picture; its text can't be selected. To get the text, use PDF to Text, or PDF to Word for an editable document.
• Typing page ranges wrongly. Separate pages with commas and ranges with a hyphen: 1-3, 5, 8-10. An open range such as 5- runs from page 5 to the end.
• A password-protected PDF. If the file needs a password to open, unlock it first with Unlock PDF, using the password you know.

The PDF is opened in your browser with Mozilla's pdf.js, the same engine Firefox uses to display PDFs. Each selected page is drawn onto a canvas at the chosen resolution and saved as PNG. The file is never uploaded, so you can safely make images from contracts, payslips or medical reports.

Very large pages, for example an architectural drawing at 600 DPI, can exceed the memory a browser tab may use. If the conversion fails, choose a lower resolution or convert fewer pages at a time.