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PDF to Image

Turn any or all of a PDF’s pages into PNG or JPG images, at a resolution you choose. Rendering happens in your browser with the same engine Firefox uses, so the document is never uploaded.

Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded

Drop a PDF here to turn its pages into images

One file at a time. Nothing is uploaded.

How to use it

  1. Drop a PDF onto the box above, or click Choose a file.
  2. Enter which pages you want, or leave the box empty for all of them. Ranges work: 1-3, 5, 8-10.
  3. Choose PNG or JPG, and a resolution. 150 DPI suits most purposes.
  4. Click Convert, then download each image from the list.

How it works

A PDF page is a set of drawing instructions, not a picture. Converting one to an image means executing those instructions — laying out text with the right fonts, filling vector paths, decoding and placing embedded images — and capturing the result as pixels. That is a real rendering engine’s job, and the one used here is pdf.js, which Mozilla develops and ships inside Firefox.

Each page is rendered independently. Its viewport is calculated at your chosen scale — a PDF point is 1/72 inch, so 150 DPI is simply a scale of 150/72 — and a canvas of that size is created, filled white, and handed to pdf.js to paint. The canvas is then encoded as PNG or JPEG by the browser’s own image codecs. Page rotation is part of the viewport calculation, so a page marked as rotated comes out upright rather than sideways.

Pages are processed strictly one at a time. A single A4 page at 300 DPI is roughly 8.7 million pixels, or about 35 MB of canvas memory before encoding, so rendering a whole document simultaneously is the quickest way to exhaust a browser tab. Doing them in sequence keeps memory bounded to one page at a time, and the progress counter shows which page is in flight.

Two limits are handled rather than left to fail. Browsers cap canvas dimensions, so a very large page at a high DPI is rendered at a reduced scale instead of producing a blank image — and the tool says so afterwards rather than quietly giving you something smaller than you asked for. And the page selection uses exactly the same grammar and the same error messages as the split and watermark tools, so an out-of-range page is reported precisely before any rendering starts.

Tips

  • Converting to share a single page? 150 DPI PNG is almost always the right answer.
  • For a long document, convert in batches of ten. It keeps memory low and saves you a wall of download buttons.
  • If the images look soft, the PDF itself may contain low-resolution scans — rendering at 300 DPI cannot add detail that is not there. Check the page in the PDF Viewer at high zoom to see what you are actually working with.
  • Going the other way, from images back to a PDF, is what Image to PDF does.

Frequently asked questions

Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No. The document is opened in your browser by pdf.js — the same open-source engine behind Firefox’s built-in PDF viewer — and each page is drawn onto a canvas and encoded as an image on your own device. Nothing is transmitted. Page-to-image conversion is a common reason people upload documents to unknown sites; there is no technical need to.
PNG or JPG — which should I choose?
PNG for pages that are mostly text, tables, line art or diagrams. It is lossless, so letter edges stay crisp with no fuzzy halos, and it is what you want if the image will be read or re-cropped. JPG for pages that are photographs or full-page scans, where it is typically five to ten times smaller for no visible difference. The rule of thumb: sharp edges and flat colour favour PNG, continuous tone favours JPG.
What resolution should I pick?
150 DPI is the right default — sharp on any screen and a manageable file size. 72 DPI matches the PDF’s own coordinate system exactly and gives the smallest files, fine for thumbnails or quick previews. 300 DPI is print quality and produces large images: an A4 page comes out around 2480 × 3508 pixels, which as a PNG can be several megabytes per page. Going above 300 rarely helps, because most PDFs do not contain that much detail to begin with.
Why does each image have its own download button instead of a zip?
Because browsers deliberately block bursts of automatic downloads that are not tied to a click — Chrome permits the first and silently drops the rest. A "download all" button would work for some people and fail invisibly for others. A button per image makes each download its own click, which always works, and it avoids adding a zip library. If you are converting a long document, do it a range at a time: 1-10, then 11-20.
Is there a limit on pages or file size?
No limit we impose, but there is a practical one. Pages are rendered one at a time and every finished image is held in this tab until you download it, so converting fifty pages at 300 DPI will ask a lot of your browser’s memory. The tool warns above 20 output files. Very large pages at high resolution can also exceed the browser’s maximum canvas size, in which case the page is rendered slightly smaller rather than failing, and you are told it happened.
Will the text in the images still be selectable or searchable?
No. An image is pixels — the text layer does not survive, which is exactly the point for some uses (sharing a page that cannot easily be edited or copied) and a drawback for others. If you need selectable text, keep the PDF. If you need text out of an image, that requires OCR, which this tool does not do.
Are the images cropped to the page content or the page size?
To the page size as the PDF declares it, including any white margins, and with the page’s own rotation applied so a rotated page comes out the right way up. Nothing is cropped or trimmed. Pages have no inherent background colour in PDF, so the canvas is filled white first — otherwise transparent areas would come out black in JPG.
Why is my password-protected PDF rejected?
Rendering the pages requires decrypting the content, and this tool does not attempt to bypass encryption. Open the file in a reader with the password, save an unprotected copy, and convert that instead.

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