What Extract Images from PDF does
A PDF that contains photos, logos, charts or scanned pages stores each as an embedded image at its original resolution. This tool finds every image object on every page and saves them as PNG files in a ZIP, along with a preview of the first few. It is the way to recover a photo from a report, get a logo out of a brochure, or pull the full-resolution scans out of a scanned document — as opposed to PDF to JPG, which photographs each whole page at screen resolution. Everything runs in your browser.
Extract images vs PDF to JPG / PNG
| Extract Images | PDF to PNG / JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Each embedded picture, separately | One picture of each whole page |
| Resolution | The image's own — often far higher than the page display | 144 dpi rendering of the page |
| Text and vector graphics | Not included (they are not images) | Included, as pixels |
| A page with three photos | Three files | One file with all three plus the text |
| A scanned document | The scan itself, at scanner resolution | A re-rendered copy at 144 dpi |
What counts as an image
- Included: photos, scans, raster logos, screenshots, charts exported as bitmaps — anything stored as an image XObject.
- Not included: vector logos and diagrams (drawn with lines and curves), text, and gradients drawn by the page. To capture those, render the page with PDF to PNG and crop.
- Images used several times (a logo on every page) are extracted once per page they appear on; duplicates are easy to delete.
- Image masks and soft masks (transparency) are applied where the format allows; some images will come out with their transparent areas black or white.
Output details
- Files are named
page3-image7.png— the page number and a running count — so you can find where each came from. - Everything is written as PNG, losslessly, regardless of how the PDF stored it (JPEG-compressed images are decoded and re-saved without further loss).
- The ZIP is built in memory; a PDF with hundreds of large images may take a while and needs a desktop browser.
- Colour is converted to RGB. CMYK images from print files may shift slightly in saturated colours.
Common uses
- Recovering original photos from a PDF album or a real-estate brochure.
- Getting a company logo out of a PDF letterhead when no source file exists.
- Pulling figures from a paper for a presentation, at publication resolution.
- Extracting the scanned pages from a scan-to-PDF file to run through an image OCR tool or clean up.
- Auditing what images a document contains before publishing it.
Frequently asked questions
The tool says no images were found, but I can see pictures.
They are probably vector graphics (logos, charts, icons drawn with paths), which are not image objects. Use PDF to PNG and crop the area you need.
Why are the images larger than they look on the page?
PDFs often embed images at full camera or scanner resolution and display them scaled down. You are getting the original data.
Why do some images have a black background?
Their transparency was stored as a separate mask the tool could not apply. Open the PNG in an editor and remove the background, or render the page instead.
Can I get JPG instead of PNG?
Run the extracted PNGs through the Bulk Image Converter to convert the whole ZIP's contents to JPG at once.
Does it work on password-protected PDFs?
No. Unlock the file first with Unlock PDF (you need the password).
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. PDF.js decodes the images and JSZip packs them, both in your browser.