PDF to Image

Export each PDF page as PNG or JPEG, entirely in your browser

PDF to Image rasterises every page of a document into a PNG or JPEG. The rendering is done by pdf.js in a Web Worker your browser starts locally, and the worker script is served from this site's own path rather than an external CDN, so the PDF you choose stays on this machine throughout. Set expectations first, though: this is a one-way conversion. What comes out is pixels — the text layer, the hyperlinks and anything selectable are gone the moment it renders, and there is no path back from the images to the PDF.

How to use it

  1. Pick a PDF. The dropzone takes a single file, with the same limits as the other PDF tools here.
  2. Choose the "Output format": PNG or JPEG. The pair of buttons starts on PNG.
  3. Set the "Scale" slider — whole numbers from 1 to 4, defaulting to 2, with the current value shown in the label as e.g. "Scale: 2×". Multiply it by 72 for the real resolution: 1× is roughly 72 dpi, 2× about 144, 4× about 288.
  4. Press "Convert to images". While it runs, a done-over-total counter appears beside the button along with a "Cancel" link.
  5. Thumbnails appear as each page finishes rather than all at the end. Pressing "Cancel" stops after the page currently being rendered; everything produced so far is kept and remains downloadable.
  6. Under each thumbnail is a "Download page N" link, saving as page-1.png and so on (.jpg if you chose JPEG). There is no download-all button, so it is one click per page you want.

When it comes in handy

Drop a PDF page into a slide deck or document

Pasting a whole PDF into presentation software usually gets you a file icon rather than anything visible, whereas an image just shows up. A 2× PNG holds up reasonably well projected on a screen; if the page is a full-bleed chart, 3× is the safer bet.

Satisfy an upload field that only accepts images

Registration systems, government portals and support forms frequently accept nothing but JPG and PNG while asking for documentation that only exists as a PDF. JPEG is usually the right pick because those systems tend to impose a few-megabyte cap and JPEG is far smaller than PNG at the same dimensions. Zoom in and confirm the text is still legible before submitting, and bump the scale up a step if it is not.

Keep a visual snapshot of a layout

Exporting a finished layout at 4× PNG gives you a record that cannot reflow — no worrying about a colleague's machine missing a font and substituting something else, because everything has already been painted into pixels. It is also the fastest way to show a page to someone over chat.

Produce a preview image of a poster or one-page design

Event posters, menus and flyers are usually delivered as PDF, but a social post or a website thumbnail needs an image file. A single page converts almost instantly; PNG keeps the type edges crisp, and you can resize afterwards to whatever the platform wants. Note there are no crop or dimension controls here — output size is purely page size times scale.

Limits and behavior

  • Black-and-white scans convert correctly. In this version CCITT Group 4, JBIG2 and JPEG 2000 images are decoded through a WebAssembly module, and that module is served by this site itself — like every other pdf.js asset it comes from our own domain rather than a CDN. CCITT Group 4 is the default for fax and for office multifunction devices scanning in black and white, so such files are common.
  • A document that relies on the predefined CJK encodings and leaves its fonts unembedded — government paperwork and exports from older systems are the usual sources — needs an extra mapping table before pdf.js can connect character codes to glyphs. That table is served by this site too, so the CJK text in such files is drawn normally. Without it the failure is not a few missing glyphs: font loading fails outright and not one character of the run appears.
  • One implementation detail worth knowing about performance: for each page, the entire file is parsed again from scratch and a full copy of its bytes is made in memory. Time therefore grows roughly linearly with page count, and the cost of a large file is multiplied by it — a 30 MB, 200-page document performs 200 complete parses over the course of the run. Budget time for long documents, and avoid running other memory-hungry work in the same tab.
  • Do not touch the format or scale controls mid-conversion. Neither is disabled while processing, and switching either one discards and frees the images produced so far — but the background loop keeps going and writes its stale list back to the screen, leaving you with broken thumbnails and dead download links. To change a setting, press "Cancel" first, wait for the button to come back from "Processing...", then convert again.
  • There is no bulk download. A 60-page document means 60 separate "Download page N" links, clicked one at a time. If you only need a few pages, extract them with the Split PDF tool first and convert the short file instead — which also sidesteps the repeated-parsing cost above.
  • Output dimensions are strictly page size times scale; there is no width or height field, no crop, and no quality slider. JPEG quality is fixed at 0.92 and PNG is lossless. An A4 page lands at roughly 1191 × 1684 pixels at 2× and about 2381 × 3368 at 4×.
  • Browsers cap both the dimensions and the total area of a single canvas. Ordinary A4 and A3 pages are safe even at 4×, but oversized engineering drawings or poster pages can exceed the ceiling at high scale, at which point that page fails with the generic "Something went wrong. Please try again." Dropping the scale by one step normally gets it through.
  • The exported images carry no text layer, so nothing in them can be searched, selected or copied, and hyperlinks, bookmarks and form fields are all absent. There is no OCR on this site, so the route from an image back to a searchable PDF does not exist. When the text has to survive, use Split PDF instead — the pages it extracts keep their text layer intact.

Frequently asked questions

What scale should I use? This is going to a printer.

Do the arithmetic first: dpi is scale times 72, so even the maximum 4× only reaches 288 dpi, slightly under the 300 dpi the print trade usually asks for. Ordinary documents print fine at 288, but fine line work and small type in tables can go a little soft. For anything genuinely headed to press, the right answer is to hand over the original PDF: its text and vector artwork are resolution-independent and the imagesetter renders them at its own resolution, so any detour through raster images can only lose quality.

PNG or JPEG?

It depends on what is on the page. Pages dominated by text, tables and line work want PNG — the compression is lossless, so letter edges do not pick up the grey halo JPEG leaves around high contrast, and PNG happens to compress that kind of content very efficiently anyway. Pages that are wall-to-wall photography or gradients want JPEG, which can be a fraction of the size at identical dimensions, and photographs hide the loss well. When unsure, convert one page at the PNG default, look at the file size, and re-run as JPEG if it is unreasonable.

Can I get all the pages as one zip?

Not currently — it is one "Download page N" click each. Two practical ways to make a long document less painful: turn off "ask where to save each file" in your browser settings so a rapid series of clicks does not raise a dialog every time, and work out which pages you actually need and extract those with the split tool before converting. The second usually removes most of the clicking.

The images are enormously bigger than the PDF was. Is that expected?

Expected, and common. A PDF stores instructions for drawing — a line of text is a handful of character codes plus a font reference, a rule is two coordinates, and both take almost no space. Rasterising turns all of that into individual pixels, and an A4 page at 4× is roughly eight million of them. A 500 KB text-heavy report becoming tens of megabytes of PNG is entirely reasonable. Lower the scale or switch to JPEG to bring it down.

Can the images be turned back into a PDF?

Technically yes — the Image to PDF tool on this site will reassemble them into one document — but that document contains only pictures, with no text layer. You do not get your original PDF back; you get something with the characteristics of a scan: unsearchable, unselectable, considerably larger, and with every link dead. If you might need to go back, keep the original file and do not treat the exported images as a backup.

Why do some pages come out blank?

First check that the page has content in the original at all — reporting systems append a blank sheet at the end more often than you would think. If the source page does have content and the export is white, that page is likely using an image or font arrangement this tool does not yet cover; the common black-and-white compressions (CCITT, JBIG2, JPEG 2000) and the predefined CJK encodings are all handled. Open the original in a reader, compare that page, and decide from there whether to reach for another tool.

Can I stop halfway, and is what I got still usable?

Yes. After "Cancel" the page currently rendering is finished and the loop then stops. Thumbnails and download links produced up to that point are all kept rather than cleared, so "I only want the first ten pages" is a perfectly good way to work: start the conversion and cancel at ten. Do note that you cannot resume — pressing "Convert to images" again starts from page one and wipes the previous batch first.