Convert PDF to PNG

To convert PDF to PNG, render the page with Preview on Mac (File, Export, PNG), pdftoppm -png on any system, or Acrobat's Export to Image. PDF Viewer on this site does not export pages as PNG; it opens, annotates and OCRs PDFs in your browser without uploading. PNG is the right choice when the page holds text, diagrams or anything that needs crisp edges or transparency.

Why PNG instead of JPG for a PDF page

PNG is lossless: every pixel is stored exactly, so black text on white stays sharp and single-color areas do not get compression noise. It also supports transparency, which matters when you drop a logo or a signature from a PDF onto a slide or a web page. The price is file size: a 300 DPI letter-size page is a few megabytes in PNG, versus a few hundred kilobytes in JPG. For photographs and scans, PDF to JPG is the better trade.

Note that the result is a picture. If you need the words, not the look, use PDF to text; if the source is a scan you want to search, OCR the PDF instead of rendering it.

Which method for which case

Main method: pdftoppm, with Preview and Ghostscript alternatives

1. Install Poppler: brew install poppler on Mac, your package manager on Linux, or a Windows build of Poppler added to PATH.
2. Run pdftoppm -png -r 300 report.pdf report.
3. Collect report-1.png, report-2.png and so on. Add -f 3 -l 3 to export only page 3, or -scale-to 1600 for a fixed pixel width.

Preview (Mac): open the PDF, select the page, File, Export, Format PNG, tick Alpha if you want a transparent background, set Resolution, Save.

Ghostscript, transparent background: gs -sDEVICE=pngalpha -r300 -o page-%d.png input.pdf. ImageMagick's magick -density 300 input.pdf -background none page.png calls Ghostscript and gives the same result. Online tools (Smallpdf, iLovePDF, CloudConvert) return a ZIP of PNGs after uploading the file to their servers; avoid them for confidential pages.

What gets lost

• Text layer. Search, copy and accessibility are gone; keep the PDF for that.
• Vector scalability. A PNG is fixed at the DPI you chose; zooming in reveals pixels. Export at 300 DPI or more if the image will be printed or cropped.
• Links, form fields and annotations are flattened into pixels or dropped.
• Color management. CMYK PDFs are converted to RGB; brand colors can shift slightly.
• Transparency only survives if you ask for it (Alpha in Preview, pngalpha in Ghostscript) and the page has no opaque background.

Going back later is covered in PNG to PDF.

Batch export and automation

Exporting one page by hand is fine; exporting every page of fifty files is a job for a script or a built-in automation tool.

• Windows (PowerShell): Get-ChildItem *.pdf | ForEach-Object { pdftoppm -png -r 200 $_.Name $_.BaseName } writes numbered PNGs next to each PDF.
• Mac Shortcuts: build a shortcut with Get File, then Make Image from PDF Page, then Save File. Set the DPI in the action's options. Shortcuts can run from the Finder's Quick Actions menu on a selection of PDFs.
• Mac Automator: the Render PDF Pages as Images action does the same in a folder workflow.
• Python: the pdf2image package wraps pdftoppm; convert_from_path('file.pdf', dpi=200) returns the pages as images for further processing.

Name output files with zero-padded numbers (page-01, page-02) when the PDF has more than nine pages, otherwise page-10 sorts before page-2 in most file managers.

Check the result

Open a PNG at 100 percent and look at the thinnest lines and the smallest text: if they are fuzzy, raise the DPI. Check the corner of a page meant to be transparent against a dark background. If you rebuilt a PDF from the PNGs, open it in the online PDF viewer and compare it page by page with the original; the thumbnails sidebar shows a missing or duplicated page at once.

Frequently asked questions