About PDF to PNG
PNG uses lossless compression: every pixel the renderer draws is stored exactly, with no blur or blocky artifacts added afterward. That makes it the right format when a page is mostly text, thin rules, charts, tables or software screenshots, where the faint halo that JPG leaves around hard edges would be noticeable. Because nothing is thrown away, there is no quality slider to set.
Behind the scenes, Mozilla’s pdf.js opens the PDF in your browser and paints each chosen page onto a canvas at the resolution you pick, and the browser stores that canvas as a PNG. Files take the PDF’s name with the page number appended (manual-p1.png, manual-p2.png and so on), and a selection of several pages is bundled into one ZIP.
Transparency isn’t preserved
The PNG format can hold transparent pixels, but this converter doesn’t produce them. Every page is painted onto solid white first, exactly as a PDF viewer shows it, so a logo or icon saved as a PDF with an empty background comes out sitting on white. If you need a cut-out graphic, export it from the original design file instead.
How to use PDF to PNG
- Add your PDFChoose the PDF from your files or drag it onto the tool. A grid of page thumbnails lets you confirm it is the right document before anything is converted.
- Pick pages and a DPIEvery page begins selected. Click a thumbnail to toggle it, or enter a list such as 2, 6-8. Then set the resolution: 150 DPI suits screens, 300 DPI suits print and text recognition.
- Download the PNG filesRun the conversion. One page is saved as a single PNG, while several pages are packed into a ZIP archive that your computer or phone can open without extra software.
When people use it
Diagrams for documentation or a wiki
Architecture diagrams, flowcharts and wiring schematics often live inside PDFs. As PNGs they can be pasted into a wiki page, a support ticket or a README, and thin lines stay clean instead of picking up gray speckles.
Clean input for text recognition
OCR software reads characters more reliably from a sharp image without compression noise. Render scanned or faxed pages at 300 DPI as PNG before running them through the OCR program you already use.
Charts you can crop and resize
Moving a chart from a quarterly report into a presentation? A 300 DPI PNG can be cropped to the chart and scaled down in your slide editor without the axis labels turning fuzzy.
Resolution guide for PNG output
A PDF measures its pages in inches, and the DPI setting decides how many pixels each inch becomes. An A4 sheet (8.27 × 11.69 inches) renders as follows:
- 72 DPI: 595 × 842 pixels. Enough to recognize a page in a file list or preview pane, though small type gets hard to read.
- 150 DPI (default): 1240 × 1754 pixels. Body text is comfortable to read at full screen and the file stays manageable.
- 300 DPI: 2480 × 3508 pixels. The usual standard for print and for OCR, where each letter needs enough pixels to be identified correctly.
Moving from 150 to 300 DPI quadruples the pixel count, and PNG files grow steeply along with it. Rendering at a higher resolution than the job needs only adds weight.
How big will the PNG files be?
Lossless doesn’t mean small. PNG compresses areas of flat color very efficiently, so a page of black text on white, a spreadsheet or a line drawing typically makes a compact file. Photographs, gradients and scanned paper with its gray grain are the opposite: every slightly different pixel has to be recorded, and a photo-heavy page is often much larger as PNG than it would be as JPG.
For brochures, magazine spreads and scanned letters, PDF to JPG or PDF to WebP is usually the better trade. Keep PNG for content with hard edges.
What changes in the conversion
- Text becomes pixels. Words in the PNG can’t be selected or searched. For the actual characters, use PDF to Text.
- Colors are rendered for screens. CMYK print files are converted to RGB, so the PNGs shouldn’t serve as color-accurate press proofs.
- Metadata stays behind. The PDF’s title, author and keywords aren’t copied into the images.
- Missing fonts are substituted. If the PDF didn’t embed a font, a similar one is used, so letter spacing can differ slightly from the original.
- Oversized sheets are scaled. A page that would exceed the browser’s canvas limit of about 8,000 pixels per side is reduced to fit. An A1 drawing at 300 DPI, for instance, would be almost 10,000 pixels tall.
- Locked PDFs need unlocking. Remove the password with Unlock PDF first; you have to know it.
Better options for other jobs
PNG output is for getting pictures of pages. If what you really want is a lighter PDF, Compress PDF reduces its size and leaves the text intact. To turn a handful of pages into their own document, Extract PDF Pages copies them without rendering anything. And if you have PNG images that need to become a PDF, that is the job of PNG to PDF.
Your PDF never leaves this tab
Rendering and PNG encoding are done by your browser on your own hardware, with no server involved, and the tool keeps working if you go offline after the page loads. The steps on our privacy page show how to confirm that nothing is sent.