Extract Images from a PDF

Frequently asked questions

How is this different from converting the PDF to images?

PDF to JPG photographs each whole page — text, background and all — at whatever resolution you pick. This reaches inside the page and takes out the pictures themselves, at the size they were stored rather than the size they are printed. A photo placed as a small thumbnail in a report is very often a full-resolution original underneath, and this is what gets it back.

Are the images the same quality as the originals?

Where the PDF stored a plain JPEG, "Original" hands you that exact file back, byte for byte — nothing is decoded and re-encoded, so nothing is lost. Everything else is rebuilt from the decoded pixels. PNG does that without any lossy compression: on an opaque image every pixel comes back exactly, and transparency is kept. JPG re-encodes and flattens transparency onto white. Pictures the PDF stores in a form a standalone JPEG can't express — CMYK, palette colour, an inverted or soft-masked image — always take the rebuilt route, because handing over the raw bytes there would give you a file with the wrong colours.

Is PNG exactly lossless?

On an opaque image, yes — every pixel is bit-for-bit what the PDF held. Where a pixel is partly transparent there is one caveat worth knowing: browsers store canvas colour already multiplied by transparency, so the colour hidden underneath a faint pixel can come back a step or two off, and a fully invisible pixel loses the colour it was never showing. The transparency itself is always exact, and so is the colour you actually see, because it is that multiplied value the browser keeps precisely. If you need the untouched bytes, use "Original" — it never decodes the image at all.

Why did it find no images, or fewer than I can see?

Not everything that looks like a picture is one. Charts, logos, diagrams and borders from a word processor or design tool are usually vector artwork drawn with lines and curves, and one-colour stencils are shapes rather than images — neither has a picture inside to take out. The size limit also hides the tiny gradient strips and rule artwork most documents are full of; drop it to 0 to see everything.

Why does the same photo only appear once?

Because it is one image. A logo on every page, or a photo placed twice on the same page, is stored once in the file and drawn repeatedly, so it is saved once rather than handed back forty times under forty names.

What does the zip contain?

One file per image, named after the PDF with the page it was found on and its position on that page, so doc-p3-2.jpg is the second image on page 3. The archive stores the images as they are rather than compressing them again — JPEG and PNG are already compressed, so zipping them harder would only cost time.

Is my PDF uploaded to a server?

No. The file is opened and its images taken out entirely inside your browser tab, so a private report, portfolio or scanned document never leaves your device.