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Is there a free way to convert a PDF document to a PNG image?
Raymond
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 2 101
How to convert a PDF document to PNG?
Answers
82
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.
Brad
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 4 459
Route is "import" -> export as – Rachael – 2015-10-27T18:10:00.237
While this is an old post, I think it may be worth pointing out that GIMP is not an ideal solution - at least I remember it not readin a pdf file generated by R correctly. Using pfftoppm with R generated pdf plots produces the correct image. (And Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro works too if you have it - can't speak about other versions.) – DetlevCM – 2016-03-13T14:28:24.740
Just don't make the mistake of trying to actually edit the PNG with GIMP if you know how to use any other image editor. Convert and export. – Noumenon – 2016-10-13T11:23:57.717
For multi page pdfs you can File>Open_as_layers then File>Export_Layers using the export layers as png plugin
– Mr Purple – 2017-05-01T21:10:56.213An update may be in order. With the 2.8.16 version of GIMP, I found that "Export as" is used instead of "Save as". – GreenMatt – 2017-09-13T20:46:40.303
9No more overkill than the 5 or so 'free' programs I installed that left a watermark on the image. Worked beautifully, thanks! – Raymond – 2010-09-08T01:00:54.050
1This is exactly what I needed. I wanted to convert a PDF to a high-resolution PNG file, and using GIMP worked really great! – Mas – 2011-09-06T19:27:03.233
1Thanks, have tried several tools, either with watermarks or other limitations. GIMP works fine. – Horst Walter – 2011-10-22T00:08:53.750
6Gimp 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. – chrishiestand – 2013-03-05T23:07:13.147
@chrishiestand, You should post that as an alternative answer. – Brad – 2013-03-06T00:21:57.010
Thanks @Brad, but I don't think it is sufficient to stand alone. It's really just an addendum to your answer. – chrishiestand – 2013-03-08T02:25:51.177
94
If you have imagemagick installed, you can just type:
convert myfile.pdf myfile.png
Though personally I prefer the results obtained from pdftoppm from Poppler utilities:
pdftoppm -png myfile.pdf > myfile.png
frabjous
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 9 044
Note that if you use imagemagick, you may also need ghostscript: http://stackoverflow.com/q/32466112/1157054
– Ajedi32 – 2016-01-07T02:26:24.9434on mac with homebrew I had to install imagemagick and ghostscript for this to work.
brew install imagemagick brew install ghostscript – Andreas – 2012-02-20T16:01:21.190
11+1 for pdftoppm: good results and fast. – Olivier 'Ölbaum' Scherler – 2012-10-24T12:42:27.143
1Why 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. – Sparhawk – 2013-02-14T04:22:51.707
Poppler does a much better job for me - I've got an input pdf with CYMK colours, with imagemagick the colours come out a crazy bright cyan. Also convert takes ~8 seconds and pdftoppm takes less than 0.5 seconds. Thanks for the pointer! – maxpenguin – 2013-03-08T02:38:21.373
1converting multipage PDF with poppler will look more like this: pdftoppm -png myfile.pdf myfile – Roman Protsiuk – 2013-07-23T15:30:41.703
Informally comparing them head to head, I found pdftoppm about 5x (for PNG) to 16x (for JPG) faster once I adjusted for the same resolution. My test file was a scientific paper 10 pages long. – sandover – 2013-12-11T22:41:22.603
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See http://blog.alivate.com.au/poppler-windows/ for windows binaries of poppler and use pdftocairo -png
15
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.
digitxp
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 13 502
On macOS you can also use the build-in sips tool: sips -s format png the_pdf_file.pdf --out the_png_file.png – goetzc – 2019-04-29T00:13:13.400
9
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.
imriss
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 287
3Signed up for super user just to upvote this. Now if I only had any hope of remembering it... – joeA – 2014-10-10T02:47:12.627
6
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.
jsejcksn
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 2 854
6
Scz
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 263
+1 for inkscape. Because you can edit the pages, rework the diagrams and save as svg or even as pdf etc... – Alain Pannetier – 2015-10-22T13:31:26.117
5
If using Windows, I would use Bullzip PDF Printer, simply choose print and then select .PNG as the file type.
William Hilsum
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 111 572
1Make sure to uncheck the option to install toolbars and edit browser home page and search settings when installing Bullzip PDF Printer. – galacticninja – 2013-05-08T04:02:23.317
3
The docupub online tool works quite well, you get an image per page: http://docupub.com/pdfconvert/
fabb
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 174
2
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
whiplash
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 21
Paint can open PDFs? – Daniel Beck – 2013-06-04T17:59:00.327
@DanielBeck He's saying to open in a PDF viewer, then copy and paste – Canadian Luke – 2013-06-04T18:01:40.883
1
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.
sunset
Posted 2010-09-08T00:34:40.340
Reputation: 171
Open in Photoshop and save as PNG – user956584 – 2016-10-20T20:35:04.197
1
I asked a similar question last year on Stack Overflow. You can read the answers there.
– stevenvh – 2010-09-08T07:13:43.4534
Related: How to convert a multi-page PDF file to PNG files, with one PNG file per page of the PDF document? (Windows)
– galacticninja – 2013-05-08T04:00:45.093