Is there a free way to convert a PDF document to a PNG image?
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1I asked a similar question last year on Stack Overflow. You can read the answers there.– stevenvhSep 8, 2010 at 7:13
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4Related: How to convert a multi-page PDF file to PNG files, with one PNG file per page of the PDF document? (Windows)– galacticninjaMay 8, 2013 at 4:00
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Open in Photoshop and save as PNG– user956584Oct 20, 2016 at 20:35
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@Raymond (OP): I know you didn't ask for a command line version, but using imagemagick is more versatile and is objectively the more useful answer. I think you should accept that as the answer instead: superuser.com/a/185897/5761– Nick BoltonFeb 10 at 9:34
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10 Answers
This is overkill for what you need, but in the absence of another answer, GIMP can do this for you. Just install it, open the PDF, and save-as a PNG.
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14No more overkill than the 5 or so 'free' programs I installed that left a watermark on the image. Worked beautifully, thanks!– RaymondSep 8, 2010 at 1:00
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1This is exactly what I needed. I wanted to convert a PDF to a high-resolution PNG file, and using GIMP worked really great!– MasSep 6, 2011 at 19:27
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1Thanks, have tried several tools, either with watermarks or other limitations. GIMP works fine. Oct 22, 2011 at 0:08
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9Gimp works great for a single page, but I don't see a simple way to export lots of pages automatically. I'm sure if you know gimp well you could use automation tools to get it working. But perhaps pdftoppm is better. Mar 5, 2013 at 23:07
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Personally I prefer the results obtained from pdftoppm from Poppler utilities:
pdftoppm -png myfile.pdf > myfile.png
If you have ImageMagick installed, you can just type:
convert myfile.pdf myfile.png
Note: To use ImageMagick, you may also need Ghostscript.
Note: On Windows, convert is a system program, so you'd need to run the ImageMagick convert binary by using it's full path.
To install to install Poppler from the command line (provides the pdftoppm command)...
On Windows, you can use Chocolatey:
choco install poppler
On Mac, you can use Homebrew:
brew install poppler
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7on mac with homebrew I had to install imagemagick and ghostscript for this to work. brew install imagemagick brew install ghostscript– AndreasFeb 20, 2012 at 16:01
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3Why do you prefer the results of pdftoppm? I notice that the default output resolution is higher than imagemagick (although this can be changed), but apart from that they seem comparable on my test file.– SparhawkFeb 14, 2013 at 4:22
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4converting multipage PDF with poppler will look more like this:
pdftoppm -png myfile.pdf myfileJul 23, 2013 at 15:30 -
4See blog.alivate.com.au/poppler-windows for windows binaries of poppler and use
pdftocairo -png– kromuchiJan 9, 2014 at 11:51
Windows: Install PDFCreator and open your PDF. Print it to the PDFCreator printer (or whatever you called it) and hit save. When you hit save, after choosing a filename, set the filetype to PNG.
Linux: Install ImageMagick (on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install imagemagick) and then in a terminal type: convert [Input PDF File.pdf] [Output PNG File.png].
Mac OS X: Open the PDF in Preview and in the Save As dialog, set the filetype to png.
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On macOS you can also use the build-in
sipstool:sips -s format png the_pdf_file.pdf --out the_png_file.png– goetzApr 29, 2019 at 0:13
You could also use GS:
"c:\Program Files\gs\gs9.10\bin\gswin64.exe" -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pnggray -r300 -dUseCropBox -sOutputFile="path_to_png_files\pdffilename-%03d.png" "path_to_pdf_file\pdffilename.pdf"
The path to GS should be adjusted based on your installation.
The DEVICE parameter here will specify grayscale. You can also output with color instead. These settings will allow you to output to 24-bit color, 300 dpi PNG files using the RGB.icc color profile:
-sDEVICE=png16m -sOutputICCProfile=default_rgb.icc -r300
Compared to convert, GS seems to run much faster, and it is more suitable for big batches of conversion.
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3Signed up for super user just to upvote this. Now if I only had any hope of remembering it...– joeAOct 10, 2014 at 2:47
Another way is
inkscape -d 300 -e "$filename.png" "$filename.pdf"
(you can omit -d 300 if you only need 96 dpi).
However, inkscape may have problems with the fonts, which is why I prefer convert from ImageMagick (see
frabjous' and digitxp's answers).
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1+1 for inkscape. Because you can edit the pages, rework the diagrams and save as svg or even as pdf etc... Oct 22, 2015 at 13:31
Which OS do you use?
On a Mac, it's as simple as opening the PDF in the Preview app and saving it as a PNG.
On http://www.zamzar.com/, you can convert many file types for free also.
If using Windows, I would use Bullzip PDF Printer, simply choose print and then select .PNG as the file type.
answered Sep 8, 2010 at 1:05
The docupub online tool works quite well, you get an image per page: http://docupub.com/pdfconvert/
if you don't don't feel like downloading anything just copy the picture and paste in paint then save as PNG and there you have it. no watermarks, not downloading files.. simple
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@DanielBeck He's saying to open in a PDF viewer, then copy and paste Jun 4, 2013 at 18:01
This free online tool:
will convert a PDF file to a PNG image inside your browser. You won't need to install anything.
If the PDF is multi-page, it will create a new image for each page.
