How to Convert a PDF to PNG on Windows

Choose PNG when the pages are mostly text, charts or line art, or when you will edit and save the image again. PNG is lossless: thin lines and small type stay crisp, and saving the image again never degrades it.

The trade-off is size and substance. A page that is a photo or a scan makes a much larger PNG than JPG, and, as with any image, the text becomes pixels: it looks the same, but it can't be searched or selected anymore.

Not directly. Microsoft Edge displays PDFs but has no option to save a page as an image, the Photos app can't open PDFs, and Microsoft Print to PDF only ever makes another PDF.

What works for a page or two is a screenshot. Open the PDF in Edge, zoom until the page fills the window, press Windows logo key + Shift + S and drag around the page. Open the capture in Snipping Tool, where Save as stores it as a PNG unless you choose another file type.

A screenshot only has as many pixels as the page has on your screen: enough for a chat message, too few for sharp printing. You also repeat every step for each page, and the zoom has to stay the same if the images should match in size.

File Acture's PDF to Images turns every page, or a range of pages, into separate image files in one run. It renders each page from the PDF itself, so the resolution doesn't depend on your screen.

Set Format to PNG and pick a Resolution of 72 DPI, 150 DPI or 300 DPI. Quality only applies to JPEG, so it does nothing for PNG, which is lossless. Leave Pages empty for every page, or type ranges such as 1-3, 5.

Each PDF gets its own folder named after it with “(images)” at the end, in Documents › File Acture › PDF or the folder you choose under Folder. The files are numbered like “Report - page 01.png” so they sort in page order. Every page is drawn on white, so the PNGs have a white background, and your PDF stays unchanged. You can convert several PDFs in one run, and nothing is uploaded.

For most uses, 150 DPI is the right resolution: sharp on screens without producing huge files. Doubling the DPI quadruples the number of pixels, so PNG files grow quickly.

• 72 DPI: previews and thumbnails. An A4 page becomes about 595 × 842 pixels.
• 150 DPI: screens, email and most upload forms. An A4 page becomes about 1240 × 1754 pixels, a US Letter page 1275 × 1650.
• 300 DPI: printing and fine detail. An A4 page becomes about 2480 × 3508 pixels, and PNG files get several times larger.

To convert only some pages, type them in Pages as numbers and ranges, such as 1, 3-5, and File Acture skips the rest. Type 8- for page 8 through the last page.

Each image keeps its real page number in the name, so page 7 of a 12-page report becomes “Report - page 07.png” and you can always tell where an image came from. The order you type the pages in does not matter, and a page number the PDF doesn't have makes File Acture stop for that PDF and save nothing.

PNG stores every pixel without loss, so the size depends on what the page contains. Plain text and flat colors compress well; photographs and scans do not, and a scanned PDF is really a photo of paper, so each page can come out several times larger as a PNG than as a JPG.

File Acture runs a lossless optimization pass over every PNG it writes, but there is a limit to what lossless can do. To shrink the files, lower the Resolution, convert only the pages you need, or save the pages as JPG instead.

Set the page range, unlock protected PDFs and plan for size limits before you convert, and one run is enough.

• Only one page? Type its number in Pages, such as 4.
• Locked PDFs: a PDF that needs a password to open must be unlocked first with Unlock PDF.
• Too big for a form? Compress the images to a target size such as 500 KB. PNG is lossless, so a small target means fewer pixels unless you switch to JPEG.
• Going the other way? Convert images to PDF.
• Batches: the free version converts up to 5 PDFs per run, with 3 runs on each PC; see pricing for Pro.