Why convert a PDF to PNG?
PNG is the image format for anything with sharp edges: text, charts, diagrams, user-interface screenshots and slides. It is lossless, so every pixel is stored exactly. JPG blurs the edges of letters slightly to save space. PNG also supports transparency, which JPG does not.
Typical reasons to turn PDF pages into PNG images:
- putting a page or a chart into a presentation, a blog post or a social media post
- sending a single page to someone who cannot open PDFs
- using a logo or a diagram that was delivered as a PDF in a design app
- adding a page to a document editor that accepts images but not PDFs
- archiving how a page looked, pixel for pixel
How to convert PDF to PNG
- Choose your PDF. Thumbnails of all pages appear.
- Pick a resolution. The hint under the box shows the pixel size of page 1, so you know what you will get.
- Tick “Transparent background” if you want see-through areas instead of white paper.
- Choose pages by tapping thumbnails or typing ranges such as “1-3, 7”. All pages are selected at first.
- Convert and download. One page downloads as a PNG; several come as a ZIP named after your PDF. Files are numbered “-page-01”, “-page-02” and so on, so they sort in order.
Choosing the resolution
PDF pages are measured in points (72 per inch), so the image size is page size in inches × dpi.
| Resolution | A4 page becomes | Typical PNG size | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72 dpi | 595 × 842 px | 50–300 KB | Thumbnails, quick previews |
| 150 dpi | 1,240 × 1,754 px | 150 KB – 1 MB | Screens, slides, web pages |
| 300 dpi | 2,480 × 3,508 px | 0.5–4 MB | Printing, zooming, OCR |
| 600 dpi | 4,960 × 7,016 px | 2–15 MB | Maps, plans, tiny print |
Doubling the dpi makes four times as many pixels. On phones, very large pages are drawn a little smaller so they fit in memory, and the tool tells you when that happens.
Transparent backgrounds
A PDF page is normally drawn on white “paper”. With Transparent background ticked, the paper is left out, so any area without content stays see-through in the PNG. That is what you want for a logo exported from a design app, or for a chart you plan to place on a coloured slide.
It only removes the paper, not colours that are part of the page. A page with a white rectangle behind the text, a coloured background or a scanned photo stays opaque in those areas. For photos, Background Remover can cut out the subject instead.
PNG or JPG?
| PNG | JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| Text and line art | Perfectly sharp | Slight blur around edges |
| Photos and scans | Large files | Much smaller files |
| Transparency | Yes | No |
| Best tool | This one | PDF to JPG |
A quick rule: if the page is mostly text or drawings, use PNG. If it is mostly photos or a scan, use JPG.
Rendered pages vs embedded images
This tool takes a picture of each whole page, as it looks. If you want the photos or graphics that were placed inside the PDF, at their original resolution and without the surrounding page, use Extract Images from PDF instead.
Compared with typical online converters
| This tool | Typical online PDF to PNG converters | |
|---|---|---|
| PDF uploaded | No | Yes |
| Resolution choice | 72 to 600 dpi | Often one fixed size |
| Transparent background | Yes | Rarely |
| Pick individual pages | Yes | Sometimes |
| Limits, sign-up or watermark | None | Common on free plans |
Private by design
Pages are drawn by PDF.js, the PDF engine built into Firefox, running inside your browser, and saved as PNG by the browser itself. Your PDF is never uploaded, there is no page limit, and there is no watermark. Need the PNGs smaller afterwards? Compress Image shrinks them, and PNG to JPG converts them when transparency is not needed.