PDF to PNG with no loss

What you get

Each page of your PDF becomes one PNG picture. The page is drawn in your browser by pdf.js, the PDF reader built into Firefox, at the sharpness you pick, and the pixels are saved as a PNG without any loss. What you see in the picture is exactly what was drawn: the same words, lines, colours and photos, on white like paper.

• A plain, solid picture. Each PNG is an ordinary colour picture with no see-through layer, so it looks the same in every app.
• The page's real size. The PNG carries its ppi, so it prints at the size of the page. An A4 page becomes 595 × 842 pixels at Small, 1240 × 1754 at Normal and 2480 × 3508 at High.
• Sideways pages stay sideways. A landscape page gives a wide picture, like the 1650 × 1275 map page in our tests.
• JPG is one tap away. PNG is chosen on this page, but the Format choice in the tool switches to JPG if a smaller file suits you better.

When PNG is the better choice

PNG stores pixels without loss. That is worth the bigger file in these cases:

• Pages made of text and lines. Typed documents, forms, tables, charts and drawings have sharp edges and flat colours, which PNG keeps perfectly. On such pages PNG costs only a little more than JPG, and sometimes less (see the table below).
• Black-and-white pages. A page of pure black text on white, like a fax or a scan made in black-and-white mode, is where PNG shines. In our tests it was smaller than JPG at Normal and three times smaller at High.
• Pictures you will edit. Each time a JPG is edited and saved, it loses a little more. A PNG can be cropped, marked up and saved again as often as you like without losing anything. Start from PNG, and save as JPG only at the very end if you need a small file.
• Charts and diagrams for slides. A chart from a report pasted into a slide stays crisp when the slide is shown on a big screen, with no fuzz around the bars and labels.
• When someone asks for PNG. Some websites, design tools and printers ask for PNG. Here it's already chosen.

When JPG is the better choice

PNG is not always the better format. It gives no extra sharpness for photos and scans, and there it makes much bigger files:

• Scanned documents. A scan is a photo of paper, full of fine grain. Page 1 of our sample scan was 2.85 MB as a PNG and 422 KB as a JPG at Normal: almost seven times bigger for a picture that looks the same.
• Pages with photos. A page with a large colour photo came out at 889 KB as a PNG and 74 KB as a JPG, twelve times smaller.
• Upload forms with a size limit. If a form wants a picture under 100 KB or 200 KB, start with JPG. Our page of a scan was far over those limits as a PNG at every sharpness.
• Sending by chat or email. Smaller files send faster and fill up phones less. For a scan, JPG at the quality we use looks the same on screen.

A simple rule: typed or drawn pages, PNG; scanned or photographed pages, JPG. For JPG with the same steps and sharpness choices, use PDF to JPG, or just switch Format in the tool above.

PNG and JPG, page by page

To show where the rule comes from, we converted one page of each of these PDFs at Normal (150 ppi) in both formats and noted the size the page showed for each picture:

The table falls into three groups:

• Pure black and white: PNG is smaller. The fax-like page was 27% smaller as a PNG. JPG is built for soft photos and handles hard black edges on white badly.
• Typed pages, charts and maps: PNG is a bit bigger. From 12% bigger for the research paper to about twice as big for the nearly empty map page. You get exact pixels for a small price.
• Scans and photos: PNG is much bigger. Between three and a half and twelve times bigger, with no difference you could see.

Your own PDF may mix kinds, such as a typed report with photos in it. Then the size of the PNGs falls between the groups, and a quick test tells you more: convert one page in both formats and look at the size under each picture.

Small, Normal or High for PNG

Sharpness changes PNG sizes more than JPG sizes, because a PNG keeps every one of the extra pixels. Here are whole documents, as the page showed them:

• Normal is right for screens, slides, documents and websites. Text is crisp on a phone and a laptop, and the files stay reasonable for typed pages.
• High is for printing, for cropping out a small part, and for very small print. Typed pages got two and a half to three times bigger than at Normal in our tests, and our sample scan almost four times bigger, so High PNGs of scans are rarely worth it.
• Small is for previews and thumbnails. Small print may be hard to read.

One more thing the High column shows: on the chart and fax-like PDF, all of High added only 140 KB to Normal, because flat colours and black-and-white pages pack well in PNG at any size. The same two pages as JPGs at High came to 1.04 MB, more than twice the PNGs. At Small, the chart page was 12 KB as a PNG against 14 KB as a JPG.

Time is rarely a problem. At Normal, our 4-page sample took about 2 seconds as PNGs and the 14-page paper 3.1 seconds. The longest we tried, all 117 pages of a maths textbook as PNGs at Normal, took 19.5 seconds.

What "lossless" really means

Lossless means the PNG holds exactly the pixels that were drawn. Open it, zoom in as far as you like, and every pixel is the one pdf.js put there. Save it again in any editor, and it is still the same.

It does not mean the PNG has more detail than the sharpness you picked. The page is first drawn at 72, 150 or 300 pixels per inch, and only those pixels are saved. A PNG at Small is still a small picture: it is just a small picture with no loss on top. So choose the sharpness for how the picture will be used, and choose PNG to make sure nothing is lost after that.

It also can't add detail that isn't in the PDF. A scanned page is already a picture with the detail the scanner caught. Converting it at High gives more pixels, not more detail, which is why PNGs of scans get so big for no visible gain.

How much does JPG actually lose? At the quality we use for JPGs, letters stay as crisp as in a PNG at normal zoom, which is why JPG is fine for most uses. The difference shows when you zoom in far on hard edges, and when a JPG is edited and saved several times, because each save loses a little more. A PNG never has that problem.

See-through backgrounds

PNG can store see-through (transparent) pixels, and people often hope a PDF to PNG converter will give them a logo or a signature with no background. This one doesn't: every page is drawn on white, like the paper it stands for, and the PNG has no see-through layer at all. We checked this with a test PDF built with see-through parts: the PNG came out solid, with not a single see-through pixel.

There are good reasons for this. Most PDF pages have no background of their own; they rely on the white of the paper. Without white behind it, black text would land on whatever is behind the picture, and on a dark slide or in a dark-mode app it could vanish.

If you need a logo or a signature on a see-through background:

• Ask for the original logo file, often an SVG or a PNG made for that purpose. It will be sharper than any converted page.
• Convert the page here at High, crop the logo, then remove the white with a photo editor that has a background remover.
• For a signature, scan or photograph it on clean white paper and use the same background remover. Sign with a dark pen so the edges stay clean.

Convert, or just take a screenshot?

A screenshot of an open PDF is often a PNG too. It is quick for a small part of a page, but for whole pages converting is better:

• Sharper pages. A screenshot only has the pixels of your screen. On a 1920 × 1080 computer screen, a whole A4 page can't be taller than the screen, so fewer than 1080 pixels; converting at Normal makes it 1754 pixels tall, and at High 3508.
• Whole pages, nothing else. A screenshot catches the reader's toolbar, the page edges, the grey around the page and your phone's status bar, and on a phone often only part of the page. Converting gives exactly the page, edge to edge.
• Every page at once. A 14-page paper is fourteen screenshots, each cropped by hand. Here it is one press of Convert and one ZIP file.
• Same size every time. All the pages come out at the same scale, so they line up neatly in a slide deck or a document.

A screenshot is still the quicker choice for a single chart or a few lines of text you want to send right away. Zoom in on that part first, so it fills the screen and gets as many pixels as possible.

Where PNG pages go

• Slides. PowerPoint, Google Slides, Keynote and Canva all take PNGs. Insert the picture, then crop it to the part you need. Normal is enough for a slide; use High if you crop a small part and show it large.
• Guides, manuals and reports. A page or a form shown inside a how-to guide stays readable, with exact lines and no smudged letters.
• Websites and blogs. A cover page or a chart as a PNG at Normal. For a page that is mostly a photo, use JPG to keep the website fast.
• Marking up. Drawing arrows, circling a figure or blacking out a number in a photo editor works best on a PNG, which won't lose quality each time you save.
• Design work. Designers often place pages or diagrams as PNG in a layout, so colours and edges stay exact until the final export.

Need a page in a size limit for an upload form instead? Choose JPG, or keep the page as a PDF and use Resize PDF, which makes a PDF fit a limit like 100 KB.

PNG names and ZIP files

Each PNG is named after its PDF and its page: our one-page form gave application-form-page-1.png. From 10 pages up, page numbers get zeros in front, like report-page-01.png, so the pictures stay in order when sorted by name.

When there are several pictures, they come in one ZIP file named after the PDF with -png at the end: our sample gave sample-scanned-contract-png.zip. With several PDFs at once, the ZIP is called pdf-to-png-3-files.zip for 3 PDFs, and each PNG inside keeps its own PDF's name.

A PNG is already compressed, so the ZIP is about as big as the pictures together. On a phone, if you only need one or two pages, skip the ZIP and use the Download button under each picture. Android's Files app and the iPhone's Files app can both open ZIP files: tap it, then Extract on Android.

From PNG back to a PDF

Edited your pages and need a PDF again? Our PNG to PDF tool puts PNGs into a PDF. PNGs made here have no see-through parts, so they go into the PDF exactly as they are, with no loss: our form's 70 KB PNG became a 71 KB PDF.

Keep in mind what the round trip changes. A PDF made from pictures has no text you can search or copy, and from a scan it can be bigger than where you started: our 4-page sample went from 9.96 MB to 11.1 MB of PNGs, and back into an 11.0 MB PDF. Our PDF compressor brought that PDF down to 684 KB at Recommended. If you didn't change the pages, just keep the original PDF.

Tips for clean PNG pages

1. Try one page first. Type its number under Choose pages and convert it as PNG, then as JPG. The size under each picture tells you which format suits your PDF before you convert all of it.
2. Use one sharpness for a whole set. Pages converted at the same sharpness come out at the same scale, so they line up in a document or a slide deck.
3. On dark slides, keep the white. Each PNG is a white page. Put it on a white box or give it a thin border, so it looks like paper rather than a hole in the slide.
4. Send big PNGs as files. Chat apps often turn pictures sent as photos into smaller JPGs. To keep a PNG exactly as it is, send it as a document or a file.
5. Keep the PDF. The PNGs show the pages, but the PDF keeps the text, the links and the form fields. You can always make new pictures from it later.

Private by design

Most online converters upload your PDF, turn it into pictures on their computers and send the pictures back. NoUploadPDF draws the pages inside your own browser, so your PDF and its PNGs never leave your phone or computer. That matters for the kinds of PDFs people turn into pictures: statements, certificates, contracts and IDs.

If a PDF is locked, you type its password on the PDF's own card, and it is only used to open the file on your device. You can check that nothing is sent: open your browser's network panel while converting, or switch off the internet once the page has loaded. Our privacy policy has the details.

Limits

• Pages are drawn on white, so a PNG made here has no see-through parts.
• A PNG shows how the text looks, not the text itself: it can't be searched or copied.
• PNGs of scans and photos are big: four pages of our sample scan came to 43.3 MB at High.
• One picture can have up to 40 million pixels, or 16 million on iPhone and iPad. Bigger pages are drawn at a lower ppi to fit, and the result says so.
• Links and form fields don't work in a picture.
• A ZIP file can hold up to 4 GB. Above that, the result asks you to download the pictures one by one.