Sometimes a page of a PDF needs to be a picture: to post it, to put it in a slide or a chat, to attach it where only images are allowed, or to keep a scan as an image. This page draws each page with pdf.js, the PDF engine inside Firefox, and saves it as a JPG or PNG at the resolution you choose. It is free to use, with no account and no upload limit, and it runs entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded, and while the page stays open, a feature you have already used keeps working offline. Most online converters upload the PDF first and limit the file size or the pages per day; here the only limit is your device's memory, and a 500-page PDF is as welcome as a one-page one.
PNG is the picture format to choose when a page is mostly text, lines, charts or diagrams: it is lossless, so letters stay perfectly sharp with none of the smudgy edges JPG compression leaves, and the page background stays transparent, so the page can sit on a coloured slide or website.
TIFF is still what many document management systems, fax services, archives, print shops and government and court portals ask for: one file holding every page, often in black and white at 200 or 300 dpi. The TIFF is written by this site's own encoder: LZW compression for colour and greyscale, and CCITT Group 4 for black and white, both lossless, with the resolution written in so pages print at their real size. Up to 2,000 pages at a time.
Resolution sets how many pixels each inch of the page becomes. An A4 or Letter page at 72 dpi is about 600 by 840 pixels, at 150 dpi about 1240 by 1750, at 300 dpi about 2480 by 3500, and at 600 dpi about 5000 by 7000. Doubling the dpi roughly quadruples the pixels and the file size, so choose the lowest that is sharp enough for the job. The line under the options gives the exact size for the page you have picked.
- What resolution should I choose?
- 150 dpi suits the screen, email and most websites - an A4 page comes out about 1240 by 1750 pixels. Choose 300 dpi to print the pictures or zoom into fine detail, and 72 dpi for small previews. Very large pages are limited to 12,000 pixels on their longest side, about what browsers can draw.
- Should I save as JPG or PNG?
- JPG for photos and scans, and whenever the file size matters. PNG for pages that are mostly text, diagrams or line drawings, which it keeps perfectly sharp, and when you want a transparent background behind the page's content.
- How do I convert just one page of a PDF to an image?
- Click that page in the previews, or type its number under Pages, then press Save: it downloads as a single picture. Pick more pages, or type ranges such as 2-4, 7, to save several.
- Why does my PNG have a see-through background?
- Most PDFs do not paint their pages white; the reader just shows white paper behind them. PNG keeps that, so the page's text and pictures sit on a transparent background, which suits putting them on a slide or a coloured page. If you need white behind them, save as JPG at Best quality instead. A picture viewer may show transparency as a checkerboard or, in some dark-mode apps, as black; it looks right on a white page or slide.
- Can I select or copy the text in the JPG or PNG?
- No: a JPG or PNG is a picture of the page. Keep the PDF for searchable text, or to pull the words out of a picture, use the OCR Toolkit. To edit the text, PDF to Word turns it into a document.
- Can I convert a PDF to JPG on an iPhone or Android phone?
- Yes, in Safari or Chrome. Choose the PDF from Files, Downloads or Drive, and a single page saves as a picture in your downloads. Several pages come as a ZIP, which the Files app on iPhone opens with a tap. Phones have less memory, so for a long PDF at 300 dpi or more, save it in batches of pages.
- Are the extracted images the original quality?
- A picture stored in the PDF as a JPEG is saved byte for byte as it is in the file, so it loses nothing, and it is the full resolution the PDF holds - which may be larger or smaller than it looks on the page. Pictures stored another way (compressed pixels, black-and-white scans, JPEG 2000) have no file of their own, so they are drawn at their own pixel size and saved as PNG, which is lossless. A JPEG 2000 picture also offers its original .jp2 file. A JPEG with a transparency mask, in CMYK colour or with inverted colours also offers a PNG that looks as it does in the PDF, since the JPEG on its own does not carry those.
- Why are some pictures missing from the extracted list?
- Only pictures stored as images in the PDF are listed. Charts, logos and diagrams are often drawn as shapes and text, which are not pictures at all - save the page as a picture instead. Tiny pictures written straight into a page's drawing instructions (inline images) are not listed, nor are pictures inside comments and stamps. Small ones are hidden by the size filter until you lower it. To keep a damaged or hostile file from freezing the page, at most 2,000 pictures are listed, pictures over 40 megapixels are not converted to PNG, and conversion stops after 1,000 megapixels in all.
- Are the PDF and the pictures uploaded anywhere?
- No. The PDF is opened and drawn by your browser, and the pictures are made there too. Nothing is sent to a server, so confidential documents stay on your computer.
- Which compression does the TIFF use?
- Colour and greyscale pages use LZW, which every TIFF reader opens and which loses nothing. Black and white pages use CCITT Group 4, the compression of fax machines and document scanners: a text page at 300 dpi comes out at a few tens of kilobytes. Both are lossless, so what is drawn is exactly what is stored.
- How does black and white TIFF handle grey and colour?
- Each pixel darker than mid-grey becomes black and the rest white, with no dithering, which keeps text and lines crisp, as a fax would. Photos and light-coloured text can come out harsh or disappear; choose greyscale for pages like that.
- Which resolution should I choose for a TIFF?
- 200 dpi is the usual choice for faxes and document systems; 300 dpi suits printing and OCR; 150 dpi keeps colour files small. A TIFF page is drawn at up to 16.7 million pixels, which is as large as phones can draw: an A4 page fits at up to about 415 dpi, so at 600 dpi it is drawn at that lower resolution, and the page says so. iPhones and Android phones show only the first page of a multi-page TIFF in their photo apps; the other pages are there.