Renders each page of a PDF as a PNG. Choose this over JPG whenever the page is mostly text or line art, which is most documents.
Why PNG is usually the better choice here
PNG is lossless: the rendered pixels are stored exactly. Text stays crisp at any zoom, and a page of black text on white compresses very well because PNG is good at flat colour.
The exception is a page dominated by a photograph. There JPEG is much smaller for no visible difference, and PDF to JPG is the better tool.
Transparency
Scanned PDFs and what they really are
A born-digital PDF was made by software — exported from Word, generated by a report tool, printed to PDF. It contains real text with real font information, and it converts cleanly in every direction.
A scanned PDF is a photograph of a piece of paper wrapped in a PDF container. There is no text in it at all — only an image — regardless of how clearly you can read it on screen.
The difference decides what is possible. Rasterising works identically on both. Extracting text works only on the first, and a scan yields nothing at all — which is reported plainly rather than handing back an empty file.
Other names for this
Also searched as “convert pdf to png”, “pdf pages to png”.
Questions
- PNG or JPG?
- PNG for text and diagrams, which is most documents — the text stays crisp. JPG when the page is mostly photographic and file size matters.
- Why are the files so large?
- PNG is lossless. A text page compresses well; a page with a full-bleed photograph does not, and should be a JPEG.
- Is my password safe to type here?
- It is used to decrypt the file inside this tab and is never sent anywhere. That is precisely the argument for this page: uploading a password-protected document and its password to a third-party server is asking them to hold both halves of the lock. Turn your Wi-Fi off before typing it if you want to be certain.
- Is my PDF uploaded?
- No. The rendering happens in this tab using pdf.js — the same engine Firefox uses to display PDFs. Contracts, medical letters, bank statements and legal filings are the documents this conversion is usually for, and none of them leaves your machine.
- Can I convert several PDFs at once?
- Yes. Drop as many as you like, or a whole folder. Each produces its own set of images, named after the original.