PDF to PNG

Render each page of a PDF to a PNG image. Choose this over PDF to JPG when the page contains text or line art, or when you need the transparent areas preserved.

Why PNG rather than JPG for pages

A typical PDF page is mostly flat white with sharp black text — precisely the content JPEG handles worst. JPEG compression produces visible ringing around letters, and pushing the quality up to hide it makes the file large anyway.

PNG is lossless and extremely efficient on large flat areas, so a text page often comes out both smaller and visibly cleaner than the JPEG equivalent. For a page of dense text, PNG is usually the correct answer.

Transparency is preserved

Areas of a PDF page where nothing is drawn are transparent. JPEG has to fill those with solid colour; PNG keeps them transparent, because it carries a full alpha channel.

That matters when the page is a logo sheet, a diagram meant to sit on a coloured background, or a stamp or signature you intend to place over something else.

Resolution and its cost

PDF pages are measured in points at 72 per inch, so rendering at scale 2 gives 144 DPI and scale 4 gives 288. Higher settings keep small text crisp but multiply the memory required: doubling the scale quadruples the pixel count.

PNG stores every pixel, so the file size grows with resolution far faster than a JPEG would. A long document rendered at 288 DPI to PNG can be very large — check that you actually need that resolution before choosing it.

The PNG is optimised, not just written

A PNG encoded straight from rendered pixels is routinely several times larger than necessary. Every PNG produced here is passed through oxipng, a lossless optimiser compiled to WebAssembly, which chooses better row filters and strips redundant chunks.

No pixel changes — the image is bit-identical — but on flat-colour content, which describes most document pages, the saving is substantial. On our reference screenshot it took a naive 410 KB encode down to 47 KB.

Local rendering, ZIP download

PDF.js renders the pages inside your browser tab and the PNG encoder runs there too. The document is never transmitted, which matters for the contracts, statements and scanned records this tool is usually pointed at.

Multi-page documents produce one PNG per page, offered individually and as a single ZIP packaged in your browser.