Convert PDF to PNG in high resolution

The short answer: pick High, and only for the pages you need

The top sharpness is called High, and it means 300 pixels per inch (ppi). PNG is already chosen on the page, so you only change one setting:

1. Open PDF to PNG in your browser, on a phone or a computer.
2. Tap Choose PDF files and pick your PDF. If it asks for a password, type it on the PDF's own card and tap Open.
3. Under Sharpness, tap High. The line below the choices shows how big the first page of your PDF will be in pixels. For an A4 page it says 2480 × 3508.
4. Want only some pages? Tap Choose pages and type them, like 2, 5-7. High pictures are big, so it pays to make only the ones you need.
5. Tap Convert. The button says what it will make, like "Convert 3 pages to PNG".
6. Tap Download. One page gives one PNG. Several pages give a Download button under each picture, plus Download all (ZIP) for the lot.

Nothing is uploaded. The pages are drawn inside your browser, so a certificate, a bank statement or a PAN card copy stays on your phone or computer. There is no sign-up and no watermark.

High is the top of the tool: it offers 72, 150 and 300 ppi, and nothing in between or above.

What "high resolution" means for a PDF page

A PDF page has a size on paper, like A4, but no fixed number of pixels. A PNG is the opposite: a grid of pixels and nothing else. So turning one into the other needs one decision: how many pixels to use for each inch of paper. That number is the ppi, pixels per inch. DPI is the older word from printers and scanners, and people use it for the same thing. When a website or a print shop asks for "300 DPI", choose High.

Multiply the page's width in inches by the ppi, and you have the picture's width in pixels. The same goes for the height. A4 is about 8.27 inches wide, so these are the pictures you get:

"High resolution" really holds two separate ideas, and it helps to keep them apart:

• How many pixels. This is the sharpness you pick. Doubling the ppi gives four times the pixels, because the picture grows wider and taller. So High has four times the pixels of Normal. The file grows too, but by how much depends on the page, as the sizes below show.
• Whether any are lost. This is the format. PNG keeps every pixel exactly as it was drawn. Choosing PNG does not add pixels. It only promises that none go missing.

Typed pages gain the most

A typed page, a form, a chart or a drawing is stored in the PDF as shapes, not dots. It is drawn fresh at the ppi you pick, so more ppi really does give crisper letters and lines. A scanned page is different. It is already a picture, and its detail was fixed the moment the paper was scanned. High gives it more pixels, not more detail. The guide explains what lossless really means.

How to tell which you have: open the PDF in any reader and try to select a word with your finger or mouse. If the word highlights, the text is real, and High can make it crisper. If nothing highlights, it is most likely a scan. Some PDFs mix both, like a typed page with a scanned stamp on it. The typed part gains from High. The stamp doesn't.

How many pixels does your job really need?

More pixels cost more space, so pick by what the picture is for:

Three sums you can do yourself

• Print size. Pixels divided by ppi gives inches. A High A4 picture is 2480 pixels wide, and 2480 divided by 300 is about 8.27 inches, the full width of an A4 sheet. Each PNG carries its ppi inside the file, so Word and printers know its real size and should print it at the size of the page. For an everyday print of a typed page, Normal is fine too: the tool's own hint says so. High is for the sharpest prints.
• Cropping. Cut a High page to half its width and half its height, a quarter of the page, and you keep 1240 × 1754 pixels, the same as a whole page at Normal. A smaller crop has fewer pixels, so it gets soft when shown large.
• A size someone asks for. Say a website wants a picture at least 1920 pixels wide. A High A4 page is 2480 wide, so it passes. At Normal it is 1240, so it does not.

How big the files get at High

PNG keeps every pixel, so High files are big. We converted these PDFs, all pages, in Chromium 141 (the browser Chrome is built on) on a computer. The sizes are the ones the page showed:

Four things to take from it:

• Pictures of text are bigger than the PDF. The form was 33 KB as a PDF and 202 KB as a High PNG. The 14-page paper was 992 KB as a PDF and 20.0 MB as High PNGs. A PDF stores letters as shapes, which takes little room. A PNG stores every pixel of them.
• Flat colours and black and white pack well. The chart and fax-like pair grew by only 140 KB from Normal to High. The form and the paper grew far more.
• Scans grow the most. The sample scan went from 11.1 MB to 43.3 MB, for pictures that are not any sharper.
• The ZIP is no smaller. A PNG is already compressed, so the ZIP is about as big as the pictures together. Gmail takes attachments up to 25 MB and sends bigger files as a Google Drive link. The paper's 20.0 MB is close to that limit, and the scan's 43.3 MB is far over it.

Time. Pictures are made one page after another, with a bar showing "Page 3 of 14". We timed these at Normal: about 2 seconds for the 4-page sample, 3.1 seconds for the 14-page paper and 19.5 seconds for all 117 pages of a maths textbook. High has four times the pixels, so expect it to take longer, and phones are usually slower than our computer. Press Stop if you change your mind: the pictures made so far stay ready to download. The guide has the same sizes for Small, Normal and High.

When a high-resolution PNG is a waste

High is made for pages of text and lines. It is a poor choice for these:

• Scanned documents. A marksheet, a bank passbook page or a scanned contract is a photo of paper, with fine grain. As PNGs, four pages of our sample scan came to 43.3 MB at High, and you can't see any extra detail. Choose Normal, or switch Format to JPG, which made the first page of that scan almost seven times smaller at Normal (422 KB against 2.85 MB).
• Pages built around a photo. A page with a large colour photo was 889 KB as a PNG and 74 KB as a JPG at Normal. PNG gives a photo no extra sharpness, so High only adds weight.
• Pages you will only read on a phone. With a whole page on the screen, a phone shows far fewer than 2480 pixels across. The extra pixels only show when you zoom in a lot, so Normal is the better fit.

The exception is a scan in plain black and white, like a fax or a scanner's black-and-white mode. There PNG is the small one: in our tests it beat JPG at Normal and was three times smaller at High.

A better plan for a mixed report: convert the whole thing at Normal, and make only the pages that need it again at High. Say a college project report has a sharp chart on page 6 and a table on page 9. Tap Choose pages, type 6, 9, pick High and convert. You get two crisp PNGs instead of a pile of big pictures you don't need.

For help choosing between the formats, see the guide's part on when JPG is better, or our article on PNG or JPG for a PDF page.

Check what you got before you use it

The page shows its work, so you don't have to guess whether you got high resolution:

• Under each picture: its pixel size, wide times tall, and then its file size. For an A4 page at High you should see 2480 × 3508.
• In the result row: the size of your PDF, an arrow, and how many PNGs you got with their total size. Below that sits one line with the pixel size, the ppi (300 for High), how many seconds it took, and the words "nothing uploaded".

Then look at the picture itself. On a computer, open it at actual size (100%), so each pixel of the picture fills one pixel of the screen. On a phone, pinch in as far as it goes. Read the smallest print on the page: footnotes, dates, figures in a table. Letters should have clean edges.

If the print looks soft even at High, the PDF is most likely a scan, or was made from pictures, and the picture inside it is the limit. Converting again won't help. Scan the paper again at a higher setting, with the page flat and in good light, or ask the sender for the original file.

For printing, choose actual size (or 100%) in the print window. Because the picture carries its ppi, it should come out at the real size of the page. If you only want a paper copy, printing the PDF itself is simpler.

Posters, maps and very big pages

A big sheet at 300 ppi turns into a huge number of pixels, and every one of them needs memory while the page is drawn. So the tool sets a limit for each picture: up to 40 million pixels, or 16 million on iPhone and iPad.

A page that would go over the limit is drawn at a lower ppi, just low enough to fit. You won't be left guessing:

• Before you convert, if the first page of your PDF is that big, the line under the choices adds "the most this device can draw at once" after its pixel size.
• After you convert, the result says which page was very big and the ppi its picture was made at. If several pages were too big, it says how many.

What this means for common paper sizes:

• A4 pages and smaller stay under the limit at High, on a phone or a computer.
• Bigger sheets, like A3 pages, posters and large drawings, may come out below 300 ppi on an iPhone or iPad. A computer allows much bigger pictures, so use one for these. The very largest posters may be made smaller there too.

The limit is on each picture, not on the PDF. Pages are made one at a time, so a long PDF of ordinary pages does not run into it.

If 300 ppi is not enough: what this tool can't do

• No setting above 300 ppi, and no number you type in. You choose Small, Normal or High. Desktop programs such as Adobe Acrobat, and Preview on a Mac, can export a page at a resolution you type.
• No cropping and no exact pixel sizes. Each picture is the whole page. To get a part, or a width a website demands, convert at High and then crop or resize the picture in your gallery or a photo editor. Making a picture smaller is safe. Making it bigger adds no detail.
• No pulling out the photos inside a PDF. The tool draws whole pages. A photo placed 3 inches wide on the page becomes 900 pixels wide at High (3 × 300), however large the original photo was. For the photo itself, ask for the original file.
• No vector output. A PNG is a grid of pixels, so it gets blocky if you blow it up a lot. A logo or drawing that must stay sharp at any size is best kept as the PDF, or as the original file, such as an SVG.
• No see-through background. Every page is drawn on white. The guide's part on see-through backgrounds shows how to cut a logo or signature out.

For a big print job, ask the print shop what it prefers. Many print shops accept a PDF as it is, and a typed PDF stays sharp at any print size.

Problems and quick fixes

• The files are far too big. Use Normal, or make fewer pages with Choose pages, or switch Format to JPG for scans and photos.
• My phone is struggling. Close other tabs and apps, keep the screen on while it works, and make a few pages at a time. Press Stop if you need to; what is ready stays ready.
• "Page 4 couldn't be drawn, so it was left out." The other pages are still made. Try that page on its own with Choose pages, or at Normal. If it still fails, the page itself may be damaged in the PDF.
• The picture is sideways. The page is sideways in the PDF too. Turn it upright with Rotate PDF first, then convert the new file.
• Where did the PNG go? Android saves it to Downloads. On an iPhone, look in Downloads in the Files app, and to put one in Photos, open it, tap Share, then Save Image.
• I need a PDF again. PNG to PDF puts PNGs made here back into a PDF without changing a pixel. The PDF will be about as big as the pictures, and its text can't be searched, so keep your original PDF too.