PNG is the format to reach for when a page is made of words, lines and flat colour rather than photographs. It is lossless, so nothing is smudged, and small type stays crisp instead of picking up the faint halo that JPEG leaves around hard edges.
That makes PDF to PNG the better converter for the things people usually want a page as an image for: a diagram going into a slide, a table for a document, a form to annotate, a certificate for a website.
Convert PDF to PNG nowLossless pages at the resolution you choose. Free, nothing uploaded.Open PDF to PNG →
Why PNG rather than JPG
The two formats were built for opposite kinds of picture, and a PDF page is usually the kind PNG suits.
| PNG | JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless | Lossy |
| Text and line art | Stays exact | Softens at the edges |
| Photographs | Large files | Efficient |
| Repeated conversions | No degradation | Degrades each time |
The practical test is simple. If the page is dominated by a photograph, PDF to JPG gives a much smaller file for the same apparent quality. For anything else — text, tables, charts, screenshots, drawings — PNG is worth the extra bytes, and you will see the difference in the small type.
The quality control behaves differently here
This is the part worth understanding, because it does not work the way a quality slider usually does.
PNG has no quality setting to turn down — it is lossless by definition, so there is nothing to compress away. What the control adjusts instead is resolution: High renders at the full resolution you set, while Medium and Low render smaller. A Low PNG is not a blurrier version of the same picture; it is a smaller picture.
The same control does something else entirely if you switch the output to JPG, where it sets the compression level at full resolution. Same slider, two quite different jobs, depending on the format above it.
Setting the resolution
The DPI figure is what actually decides the pixel dimensions. On an A4 page it works out roughly like this:
- 300 DPI — about 2480 pixels wide. Print quality, and the right choice for archiving.
- 150 DPI — about 1240 pixels. Comfortable for screens and documents.
- 96 DPI — about 790 pixels. Web-sized, fine for a preview or a thumbnail.
Choose by destination rather than by instinct. An image that will be displayed 900 pixels wide gains nothing from being 2480, and the file will be several times larger for no visible benefit. Where you are unsure, go higher and shrink afterwards with Resize Image — scaling down is safe, scaling up is not.
Colour and grayscale
Grayscale drops colour before the PNG is written. On a document where colour carries no meaning — a scanned letter, a contract, most tables — it costs you nothing and makes a noticeably smaller file. Keep colour whenever it means something: a chart with a colour key, a highlighted clause, a logo.
One file, several files, or one long image
Three outcomes, depending on what you asked for:
- A single page comes back as a single image, ready to use.
- Several pages as separate files arrive in a ZIP, one image per page.
- Several pages with separate files turned off produce something more unusual: one tall image with every page stacked vertically down it.
That last option is genuinely useful and easy to overlook. A whole document as one continuous image is exactly what you want for pasting into a chat, attaching to a ticket, or embedding in a page where a reader should scroll rather than click through a gallery. It is not what you want for anything that will be printed.
Choosing pages
Everything, or a typed range like 1-5, 8, 11-13. On a long document this is the difference between a few seconds and a few minutes, since every page has to be rendered on your own machine. Pages outside the document are ignored rather than causing an error, so it is worth glancing at the page count before typing.
Convert your own pagesPick the pages, set the resolution, download.Open PDF to PNG →
Getting a better result
Rotate first
A sideways page produces a sideways PNG, and fixing that afterwards means editing every exported image. Rotate PDF takes one pass.
Do not use PNG for photo pages
A page of holiday pictures saved losslessly can be many times the size of the same page as a JPG, with no visible improvement. Match the format to the content, not to a general preference for quality.
Use grayscale on documents
Most scanned paperwork carries no meaningful colour, and dropping it is the cheapest saving available here.
Extract before converting
If you need three pages from a hundred, Extract Pages first or type a range. Rendering ninety-seven pages you will delete is pure waiting.
Check the smallest text
Open the result at 100% and look at the finest print on the busiest page. That is where an over-economical resolution shows up first.
What it will not do
- It does not produce transparent images — pages are drawn on white, since PDF pages have a background.
- It does not keep text selectable — an image is an image.
- It does not extract pictures from inside a page — you get the page as a whole.
- It cannot read an encrypted document — remove the password first.
Common questions
Is PNG better than JPG for this?
For pages made of text, tables and line art, clearly yes — lossless compression leaves letterforms exactly as they were. For pages that are mostly photographs, JPG gives you a far smaller file at the same apparent quality.
Will my PNG have a transparent background?
No. Each page is rendered onto white before the image is written, so the result is opaque. PNG here means lossless, not see-through.
What DPI should I use?
300 for print or archiving, 150 for screens and documents, 96 for the web. Higher than the destination needs only costs file size.
Is my document uploaded?
No. Rendering and encoding both happen in your browser, on your machine. Nothing is transmitted.
Why is my PNG so much larger than a JPG of the same page?
Because nothing was thrown away. That is the trade you are making, and it is a good one for text and a poor one for photographs.
Can I turn the images back into a PDF?
Yes, with PNG to PDF — though the round trip loses the text layer for good, so keep the original document.
The rest of the PDF toolkit
- PDF to JPGSmaller files, better suited to photographic pages.
- PNG to PDFBuild a document out of the exported pages again.
- Rotate PDFStraighten pages before exporting them.
- Extract PagesNarrow the document before rendering it.
- Resize ImageBring a 300 DPI export down to web size.