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Extract Images from PDF
Use this free tool to extract images from a PDF at their original quality. It looks inside the file and pulls out the actual pictures stored there — photos, scans, logos — instead of taking low-resolution screenshots of the pages. Save each image as a PNG, or grab them all in one ZIP. The reading happens in your browser; your document is never uploaded.
Your file is processed entirely on your device and is never uploaded. The PDF.js reader library used by this tool is loaded from the cdnjs CDN (cdnjs.cloudflare.com); only the library travels over the internet, never your document.
How to use this tool
- Click the drop box (or drag your PDF onto it). The box confirms your file name and size.
- Press Extract Images. The tool reads the file page by page.
- Every picture found appears below as a card with its size in pixels.
- Press PNG under any picture to save just that one, or Download All as ZIP to save the whole set in one file.
How it works
A PDF page is a list of drawing instructions — draw this text, fill this shape, paint the image stored under this name. The stored pictures are complete image files kept inside the PDF, at whatever resolution they were embedded. This tool opens your document with the PDF.js reader library, walks the drawing instructions of every page, and whenever it meets a “paint image” instruction it takes that stored image, decodes it to raw pixels and offers it to you as a PNG:
That is why extraction beats the screenshot trick. Photographing a rendered page can only give you the pixels on your screen — often a few hundred across — while the stored photo may be several thousand pixels wide, which is what you want for printing, editing or reusing the picture in a presentation. Two honest limits follow from the same idea. First, anything the document draws as vector shapes — most charts, diagrams and text logos — is not a stored image, so there is nothing to extract; our PDF to PNG tool is the right choice for those pages. Second, a handful of files tuck images away in unusual corners (inline image data, images inside nested form XObjects); the tool reports what it finds and does not pretend otherwise. Duplicate pictures used on many pages — a letterhead logo, say — are listed once per use, so you can see exactly where they appear.
| What is in the PDF | What you get |
|---|---|
| Embedded photo (JPEG) | The full-resolution photo, as PNG |
| Scanned page | One large image — the scan itself |
| Chart or diagram | Usually nothing — it is drawn shapes, not an image |
| Logo on every page | The logo once per page it appears on |
| Text | Nothing — use PDF to Text for words |
People extract images for practical reasons: recovering the original photos from a brochure when the source files are lost, lifting a scanned signature or a product photo out of a supplier's catalogue, or pulling the charts out of a report for a presentation. Because the pixels are the document's own, the results are as good as the file allows — no re-photographing, no watermarks added, nothing uploaded to a stranger's server along the way.
Worked example
A school administrator receives the annual day programme as a 6-page PDF and needs the group photographs for the school notice board and website. The original photo files were on a teacher's phone and are gone.
Step 1: She drops the programme into the box and presses Extract Images.
Step 2: The tool finds 9 images — the school logo (used on all 6 pages) plus 3 group photos.
Step 3: Each card shows its pixel size, so she can spot the big photos at a glance.
Step 4: She downloads the three photos individually as PNGs, at the full size stored in the file.
The notice board prints come out sharp, because she recovered the photos themselves — not screenshots of a PDF page squeezed onto a screen.
FAQ
How do I extract images from a PDF?
Drop your PDF into the box and press Extract Images. The tool reads every page, finds the pictures stored inside the file and shows them as a gallery. Download any single image as a PNG, or press Download All as ZIP to save them together. Everything runs in your browser — the PDF is never uploaded.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. Your PDF is opened entirely in your browser with the PDF.js reader library, and the images are pulled out on your own device. The only thing downloaded from the internet is the PDF.js library itself, which loads from the cdnjs CDN — your document is never sent anywhere.
Will the extracted images be full quality?
Yes. The tool takes the original image data stored inside the PDF — the very pixels the document carries — rather than photographing the rendered page. A photo embedded at 3000 pixels wide comes out at 3000 pixels wide, saved as a PNG so nothing is lost in the conversion.
Why did the tool find fewer images than I can see in the document?
Some pages are built from drawings rather than stored pictures: charts, logos and diagrams are often vector shapes — lines and curves, not images — so there is no picture file inside to extract. A scanned page, on the other hand, is usually one big image per page. A few files also hide images inside form XObjects or as inline data, and those unusual cases may be skipped.
What format are the extracted images saved in?
Every image is saved as a PNG file. PNG is a lossless format, so the pixels you get are exactly the pixels stored in the PDF, whatever format they were originally saved in — JPEG, or one of the PDF-specific encodings like JBIG2 or JPEG 2000.
Can I extract images from a password-protected PDF?
No. A PDF with an open password cannot be read by the reader library at all. Remove the password first — for example by opening the file in a reader that you have the password for and saving an unprotected copy — then extract from that copy.