How to convert PDF to image

July 20, 2021 Henry Jackson 0 Comments

Would you like to extrapolate the images contained in a PDF file you downloaded from the Internet but the mere idea of being there to make dozens of screenshots and crop them “manually” makes you fall into the deepest despair? Well, who tells you you have to do it? Only a madman would suggest such a complex procedure, also because by now there are so many solutions to be used for this purpose that there is only to be spoiled for choice.

In today’s guide, in fact, I will show you how to convert PDF to image on your PC, with special software or online tools, but also on your smartphone or tablet, thanks to apps used for this purpose. I assure you that you will only need a few minutes of free time and a handful of clicks (or taps) to reach your goal: all you have to do is find the solution that best suits your needs, among those I am about to propose, give it ” in meal ”the document from which to steal the images and wait for the procedure to be completed.

So: how about not wasting any more time and getting to work immediately? All you have to do is sit comfortably, choose one of the solutions I’m about to point out and carefully read the steps necessary to put the file conversion into practice. I bet you will be amazed at how easy it is to do it! Having said that, I just have to wish you a good reading and, above all, a good job!

Index

How to convert PDF to image for free
- Convert PDF to Image on Windows
- Convert PDF to Image on Mac
- Convert PDF to Image Online
- Convert PDF to Image on Android
- Convert PDF to Image on iOS / iPadOS
How to convert PDF to image with Adobe

Table of Contents

How to convert PDF to image for free

If you want to convert a PDF to an image for free on your PC or on your smartphone or tablet, what you need to do is read carefully the solutions that I will show you in the next chapters.

Convert PDF to Image on Windows

If you have a PC with Windows operating system, I can show you some software that you can use to carry out the conversation from PDF to image file. You will find everything you need in the next paragraphs.

Any PDF to JPG

The first tool I want to tell you about, which you can use on any Windows 10 PC, is Any PDF to JPG. It is an application downloadable from the Windows Microsoft Store that allows you to convert any PDF file into an image. The supported output formats are JPG, PNG, BMP, GIF and TIF.

To download it to your computer, go to this link and press the Get button and then Install. By doing so, all the necessary files will be downloaded and the installation will run automatically in no time at all. At the end of this procedure, you will find the application icon within the Windows Start menu.

After starting Any PDF to JPG, click on the Load PDF button, located at the top left, and select the file to convert. Once this is done, click on the Save Image button, located at the bottom right. In the box that is shown to you, then indicate the path where the pages of the PDF should be extracted (use the (…) button to choose the destination folder).

At this point, in case the PDF is composed of several pages, make sure that the Create subfolder for each PDF file box is activated, so that the pages are all contained within a folder in the directory you have chosen.

Now, select the pages to convert: All (to select them all), Current Page (to extract only the highlighted page) or Pages (to indicate the page numbers for the range you are interested in converting). Finally, use the drop-down menu under the heading Output Format to choose the output format.

Now you just have to press the Continue button to immediately start the process of extracting and converting the pages into the image format of your choice. Pressing the Open Folder button in the message on the screen will open the folder containing the images relating to the pages of the PDF.

PDF to JPG

If you prefer to use a tool on Windows that does not require any installation to convert a PDF to an image, you can rely on PDF to JPG. It is a free and open-source tool that extracts photos from PDF documents and saves them as a JPG file.

The program does not have a graphical interface, as it works from the command line. Don’t worry though, because it’s not complex at all and, in fact, you’ll find it’s super easy to use. To download it on your PC, connect to its official website and click on the Download button, at the top, to download it, in the form of a .ZIP file.

Once the download is complete, open the zip archive that contains the software and extract the contents to any folder. Then take the PDF from which you want to extract the images and drag it right above the program icon ( p2j.exe ).

A Command Prompt window will open and notify you that the file has been converted to an image within a folder that is in the same directory as the tool. Then press the Enter key to confirm the completion of the operation and close the screen.

To learn more about how PDF to JPG works and discover all the commands supported by the software, read the manual.txt document contained in the folder where you extracted all the program files.

Do you prefer to convert the pages of the document in full, keeping intact texts and other additional content? No problem, you can use the free PDFill FREE PDF Tools software I told you about in my tutorial on how to convert PDF to JPG.

Convert PDF to Image on Mac

Do you own a Mac and are you looking for a solution to convert PDF to image? Well, you will find some useful tools suitable for the purpose right below.

Preview

If you do not want to use any third-party tools and, therefore, want to rely on the already predefined solutions of the macOS operating system to convert PDF to image, all you have to do is use the Preview application.

Surely you will be familiar with this tool, which allows you to view images and PDFs, but also allows you to export PDFs to JPG, PNG and TIFF files in a few simple clicks.

I warn you that this macOS tool can only be useful if you need to extract one or a few pages from the PDF. If not, you’ll need better tools, like the ones I’ll tell you about in the next chapter.

To use Preview for the goal you have set yourself, open the PDF document of your interest by double-clicking on it, and select View> Thumbnails from the menu bar at the top. At this point, right-click on the preview of the page you want to convert, located in the sidebar and select the Export as an item from the context menu, to display the page export screen.

Then use the appropriate fields to select the file name and destination folder, the Format drop-down menu to choose the format of the image file you want to obtain, adjust the image quality settings and press the Save button to start the conversion process on the page of the PDF in question.

PDF Toolkit +

In the Mac environment, I also recommend the use of PDF Toolkit +: it is a small app that costs € 2.29 and allows you to edit, create and convert PDFs in many other formats. You can buy it directly from the Mac App Store. As for how it works there is not much to explain: you find everything you need in the Text / Images tab of the software.

After dragging the PDF to be edited in the PDF Toolkit + window, choose whether to convert all the pages of the document into images or whether to extract only the photos contained in it: in the first case, you must select the file format to convert the PDF pages ( JPEG, PNG or TIFF ), from the drop-down menu located at the bottom right, and press the Convert button; in the second case, however, you have to click on the Extract button and wait for the procedure to complete.

If you do not think it appropriate to spend money just to convert the pages of a PDF document into images, follow my guide on how to transform PDF to JPG on Mac in which I explained how to do this with Automator, one of the utilities included “by series ”in macOS.

Convert PDF to Image Online

If you want to proceed through online services to convert PDFs to images directly from your browser, in the next paragraphs you will find some solutions that can certainly pique your interest.

SmallPDF

SmallPDF is one of the best Web services dedicated to the processing of PDF files: it allows you to convert, modify and optimize them in a very simple way. It also has no upload limits and protects users’ privacy by deleting all files that are uploaded to its servers within 1 hour.

To use SmallPDF, linked to this page of the service, drag your PDF into the box located in the center of the screen and choose whether to extract the images from the document or whether to convert the pages of the file in full (keeping texts, borders, etc.).

I warn you that the functionality of extracting images from a PDF is only available for PRO accounts, with costs starting from 10 euros/month or 90 euros/year. You can still activate a free trial plan for 14 days. If you want to convert an entire page to image format instead, you can proceed for free.

Then wait for the PDF to be processed and download the photos extracted from it by clicking on the Download button next to the wording [file name] .zip.

ExtractPDF

If SmallPDF does not satisfy you, you can use ExtractPDF which, as the name suggests, allows you to extrapolate images from PDFs by saving them in JPG format.

Like SmallPDF, it protects users’ privacy by deleting all files that are uploaded to its servers within a few hours but, unlike the latter, it has an upload limit: it does not allow you to process documents larger than 25MB.

To “capture” the images contained in your PDFs with ExtractPDF, linked to the service home page, click on the Choose file button and select the document to be processed.

Then presses on Start, wait for the file to be processed and download the images extracted from it by clicking on their previews, present in the Images tab, or on the Download all images as zip file button (to download them all together).

Convert PDF to Image on Android

If you want to download an app on your Android smartphone or tablet that allows you to convert a PDF to an image, I recommend that you consider one of the solutions I’ll tell you about below.

PDF to Image Converter

Among the apps that allow the export of the pages of a PDF to an image on Android, I recommend PDF to Image Converter, which is free but has advertising banners, removable with a one-time purchase of 10.99 euros.

After having downloaded and notified the app in question, which can be found directly from the Android Play Store, choose the image output format, press the + key to choose the PDF to convert, and therefore wait a few moments for it to be completed the conversion.

In the next screen, you will be shown the pages to export: by default they are all selected but, in case you want to remove any, simply remove the checkmark from the thumbnail. Finally, press on the disk icon, to start the saving process in the device Gallery.

PDF2IMG

Another useful app to convert PDF to image is PDF2IMG, available completely free and without banner ads on the Android Play Store. After you have installed the app in question via the link I provided, launch it via its icon on the home screen.

On the main PDF2IMG screen, then select the PDF you want to convert by locating it in the Scan PDF tab. You can also search for it in the memory folders, using the Folder tab. When you have found it, press on it to open it.

In the next section that is shown to you, press the All Pages button, to start the conversion process on the whole document, or press Select Pages, to select one or more pages.

Now set the image quality and press the Format wording to select the JPEG, PNG or WEBP format. Finally, press on Start, to start the conversion: you will find the image files in the Android Gallery.

Convert PDF to Image on iOS / iPadOS

If you want to convert PDF to an image on iPhone or iPad, you can use a quick command that allows you to do this instantly. But first you need the Commands app, developed by Apple, to manage these automated procedures.

After downloading and installing the app in question (if not already present “standard” on your device), reach this link with your Safari browser, to access the quick command to be entered in the Commands app. All you have to do is press the Get quick command button to confirm the integration procedure on the app in question.

On iOS13, you may need to disable the restrictions of this version of the operating system, which does not allow the addition of shortcuts not coming from the official gallery. Therefore, go to the Settings> Quick Commands menu, move the lever next to the word Allow untrusted quick commands to ON and press Allow.

Now, open a PDF file on your device or on the web and hit the share button. In the on-screen pane, scroll through the different options and press Quick Commands. After the Commands app starts, click on the PDF to Image icon and wait for the conversion process to finish. You will find the converted pages within the Photos app.

How to convert PDF to image with Adobe

If you have Adobe Acrobat and would like to know how you can convert a PDF to an image, know that the procedure is easy and requires only a few simple clicks. I warn you that the free version of Adobe Acrobat, i.e. Reader, only allows you to view PDFs without being able to make other substantial changes to the document.

Therefore, what you need to do is purchase a subscription to Adobe, following the instructions I have given you in this guide so that you can download and install the software. In any case, you can also activate a free 7-day trial, directly from the official website, which you can cancel before the billing period begins.

That said, start Adobe Acrobat and click on the File> Open items to locate the PDF file you want to convert. Once the document has been opened, click on File> Save as other> Image and choose one of the formats listed (JPEG, TIFF or PNG). Select the destination folder, type the file name and press the Save button to confirm saving the PDF in image format.