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How to convert a PDF to images (PNG or JPG)

Turn each page of a PDF into a sharp PNG or JPG at whatever resolution you need, for a thumbnail, a slide, or an email. Or pull the original images back out of the file. Here is how.

Two different jobs

"PDF to image" can mean two things, and pdfblah does both:

• Render: draw each page as a picture (PNG or JPG) at a chosen resolution. Good for thumbnails, previews, or dropping a page into a slide.
• Extract: pull the images that are already embedded in the PDF back out as separate files, at their original quality.

Render pages to images online

1. Open the editor and drop in your PDF.
2. Pick PNG in the Output panel.
3. Download. One page comes back as a PNG, several as a zip.

For JPG, a specific resolution, or pulling out embedded images, use the command line or the free local app:

Three ways to do it

Same engine, same result. Pick one:

• Online at pdfblah.com: nothing to install, free while we're testing.
• On your machine, free and private (nothing is uploaded): pip install pdfblah, then pdfblah gui opens the same tool in your browser.
• Command line, for scripts and bulk jobs:

pip install pdfblah

# every page to PNG at 150 dpi
pdfblah render in.pdf -o images/ --dpi 150 --format png

# just page 1 as a high-res JPG (a thumbnail or cover)
pdfblah render in.pdf -o images/ --pages 1 --dpi 300 --format jpg

# pull out the images already embedded in the PDF
pdfblah extract in.pdf --images -o extracted/

The app and CLI are open source (MIT). See the pdfblah project on GitHub.