PDF to Image Converter

A PDF to image converter turns each page of a PDF into a standalone picture file. This one runs entirely in your browser and offers every format your browser can encode — usually PNG, JPG, WebP and AVIF — at any resolution from 72 to 600 DPI. A US Letter page at 300 DPI comes out at 2550 × 3300 pixels. Nothing is uploaded to a server.

The format list here is shorter on some browsers, and that's deliberate

Most converters advertise a fixed set of formats and quietly hand you a PNG when the one you picked isn't supported. Browsers do this by design: ask a canvas for AVIF on a browser that can't encode AVIF and you get PNG data back with no error at all.

So this tool tests each format when the page loads — it encodes a single pixel and checks what actually came back — and only shows the ones that genuinely work. If you see three formats instead of four, that's your browser, and the note under the buttons says which one is missing. Chrome and Edge generally do all four. Safari and Firefox typically cover PNG, JPG and WebP.

Which format to pick

The honest rule: if the page is mostly text, diagrams or line art, use PNG. If it's a photograph or a scanned page, use JPG or WebP. Text is where lossy compression shows first — letter edges pick up a faint halo before you notice anything wrong with a photo on the same setting.

One quirk worth knowing: JPG and AVIF have no alpha channel. A PDF page with a transparent background would encode as black in those formats, so the tool paints white behind the page first. PNG and WebP keep transparency as-is. Mozilla's image format guide covers the trade-offs in more depth if you want the full picture.

What DPI actually does to a PDF page

PDF pages are measured in points, not pixels — 72 points to the inch. A US Letter page is 612 × 792 points, A4 is 595 × 842. The DPI slider decides how many pixels each of those points becomes, so it is the single control that sets both your image dimensions and, indirectly, most of your file size.

150 DPI is the setting most people should use and rarely do. It is sharp on every screen you own and produces files a fraction the size of 300. Reach for 300 when the image is going to be printed or cropped into; 600 is for large-format work and produces a 33-megapixel image from a single Letter page.

That size is also where phones start to struggle. Above roughly 16 megapixels — around 415 DPI on a Letter page — some mobile browsers return a blank canvas instead of an error. The tool warns you before you cross that line, and if a page does come back empty, dropping the DPI is the fix.

Why the quality slider greys out on PNG

Because it would do nothing. PNG is a lossless format — there is no quality dial to turn, only a compression level that changes encoding time rather than what the picture looks like. Plenty of converters leave the slider active on PNG anyway, which makes people think they've reduced a file when they haven't.

For JPG, WebP and AVIF the slider is real. Around 90% is where most people should sit. Below about 70% you will start to see blocking around letterforms, and text degrades earlier and more visibly than photographs do. If a PNG file is bigger than you want, the lever is the DPI slider, not the quality one.

Converting pages is not the same as extracting images

These two jobs get confused constantly, and they produce completely different results.

Converting a page renders the whole thing — text, background, borders and any pictures on it — into one flat image. That is what this tool does. Extracting images pulls out only the embedded photo files that were placed into the PDF, at whatever resolution they were originally saved, with no page text around them.

If you want a picture of the page, convert it. If you want the original photograph that someone dropped into a report, you want extraction, and this tool will not give you that — you'd get the whole page with the photo sitting inside it. Worth knowing before you convert 200 pages and find the wrong thing in your ZIP.

Nothing is uploaded, and that is checkable

The PDF is read by your browser, rendered on a canvas element on your device, and encoded there. No copy is sent anywhere, which means there is no server-side retention policy to trust and no queue to wait in. It also means conversion speed depends on your device rather than someone else's load.

You don't have to take that on faith. Open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and convert a file — you'll see the library load once and then no further requests. For contracts, medical records, financial statements or anything under NDA, that difference is the whole point.

The trade-off is honest: very large documents at high DPI depend on your device's memory, and a 400-page PDF at 600 DPI will struggle on a phone where a server farm would not. Convert in batches using the page range box when that happens.

Related PDF tools

If you need to reshape the document before converting it, split and extract PDF pages first so you only render what you need, or merge several PDFs into one before converting. To stamp pages before turning them into images, add a watermark to your PDF. The full set lives in the PDF tools collection.

Frequently asked questions

Does converting a PDF to an image lose quality?

Something is always lost, but not the thing most people worry about. PDF text is stored as vectors that stay sharp at any zoom; an image is a fixed grid of pixels. So the conversion itself is one-way regardless of format — you lose selectable text, searchability and infinite scaling. What you don't have to lose is visible sharpness: at 300 DPI a converted page looks identical to the original on screen and in print. Choose PNG and no further compression loss happens on top of that.

How do I convert a PDF to PNG without losing quality?

Pick PNG and set the resolution to 300 DPI or higher. PNG is lossless, so the encoding stage adds no degradation at all — the only variable that affects sharpness is the DPI you render at. At 300 DPI a US Letter page becomes 2550 × 3300 pixels, which is enough to print at full size or zoom into on screen. Going above 600 rarely helps, because you are past the detail the source page contains.

Should I convert a PDF to PNG or JPG?

PNG for text and line art, JPG for photographs. Lossy compression damages hard edges first, so a page of type shows artefacts around letters long before a photo on the same setting looks wrong. JPG also has no transparency, so transparent areas get a white background. If the page is a scan or a photograph and the file needs to be small, JPG or WebP is the better trade — WebP typically lands noticeably smaller than JPG at the same visual quality.

How do you extract images from a PDF file?

Extraction and conversion are different jobs. Extracting pulls the original embedded picture files out of the document at the resolution they were saved; converting renders the entire page — text and all — into one flat image. This tool converts pages, so if a report contains one photograph you will get the full page with that photograph on it, not the photograph on its own. For the original file you need a dedicated extractor or a desktop PDF editor.

Can I convert a PDF to an image for free?

Yes. There is no account, no email, no watermark on the output and no page limit imposed by the tool. Because the conversion happens on your own device rather than on a server, there is no per-file cost to pass on and no usage tier to sell you. The practical limit is your device's memory, which only becomes relevant with very long documents at high DPI.

How do I convert a PDF to an image on iPhone?

Open this page in Safari or Chrome on the phone and pick the PDF from Files, iCloud Drive or wherever it lives. Conversion runs on the phone itself. Two things to expect on mobile: AVIF may not appear in the format list depending on your iOS version, and very high resolutions can exceed what mobile Safari will render — above roughly 16 megapixels it can return a blank image rather than an error. If a page comes out empty, lower the DPI and convert again.

Can it convert a PDF image to text?

No — that is optical character recognition, and this tool does not do it. Converting goes the other direction: it turns a page into pixels, which actually removes any text layer the PDF already had. If your goal is editable or searchable text from a scanned document, you need an OCR tool instead. Converting first and running OCR on the images afterwards works, but you will get better results running OCR against the original PDF.

Is it legal to extract or convert images from a PDF?

Converting a document you own or have permission to use is fine. The format change does not alter who owns the content: a copyrighted image is still copyrighted after it becomes a PNG, and a licence that forbids redistribution still forbids it. Converting your own invoices, reports and scans carries no issue. Extracting artwork from someone else's PDF and republishing it is a copyright question, not a technical one. When in doubt, check the document's licence terms.

Can I convert only some pages instead of the whole PDF?

Yes. Switch the page selector to Selected and type the pages you want — single numbers, ranges, or a mix such as 1-3, 5, 8. Reversed ranges are accepted and sorted for you, numbers beyond the document length are ignored, and duplicates are removed, so a rough guess still produces a clean set. The count above the button tells you exactly how many pages will be rendered before you commit.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. The PDF is read, rendered and encoded entirely inside your browser, and no copy of it is transmitted anywhere. You can confirm this yourself: open developer tools, watch the Network tab, and convert a file — the rendering library loads once and nothing else is sent. This matters for contracts, medical records and anything covered by an NDA, where uploading to a third party is the problem you are trying to avoid.