A brochure has the photograph you need, an old invoice has the only copy of a logo, a report has a diagram someone wants for a slide. The usual answer is a screenshot, and the usual result is a soft, slightly wrong-coloured picture. There is a better way, because the original picture is usually still inside the file.
A page, or a picture?
Two different jobs get lumped together. Sometimes you want the page: the text, layout and pictures exactly as they look, turned into one image to paste into a message or a slide. Sometimes you want a picture that sits on the page: just the photograph, at its own size, without the words around it.
The first job is what PDF to JPG does, and our guide to choosing a resolution covers it. This guide is about the second job. It matters because the two give very different results: a page image is only as sharp as the resolution you ask for, while an extracted picture is exactly as sharp as it was when it went into the PDF.
Four ways to get a picture out
| Method | What you get | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Screenshot | Whatever your screen shows, at screen resolution | Soft in print, may include a cursor or a scrollbar, and is compressed a second time |
| Copy and paste from a reader | Sometimes the picture, sometimes a rendered copy | Behaviour differs between readers and between files, and the result is hard to predict |
| Export the page as an image | The whole page at a resolution you choose | Includes the text and layout, so you have to crop |
| Extract the stored pictures | The picture objects themselves, at their stored size | Only works for pictures that are stored as pictures |
The last route is the one that keeps quality. A JPEG photograph in a PDF is stored as a complete JPEG file, so it can be copied out byte for byte, with nothing decoded and re-saved. Other kinds of picture are decoded and saved as PNG files, which do not lose detail, and a picture with a transparent background keeps its transparency.
Extracting step by step
- Open the PDF in Extract images. The search starts as soon as the file is added. Nothing is uploaded; it all happens in your browser tab.
- Look at the cards. Each picture shows its page, its size in pixels, its type and its file size. Tiny pictures under 32 pixels are hidden by default, because they are nearly always bullets and rules.
- Pick what you need. Save a single picture from its card, tick several and download only those, or download everything as a ZIP.
- Open one in an image viewer before you rely on the batch. Check that it is the picture you expected and that its size suits the job.
A picture used on several pages, such as a logo in a running footer, is stored once and appears once in the list, named after the first page that uses it.
Is the picture good enough?
The pixel size on the card is what counts. Compare it with what the job needs:
- On a web page or in a slide: a picture about 1,200 pixels wide is plenty for a full-width image on most screens, and 2,000 pixels leaves room for sharp display on high-density screens.
- In print: aim for about 300 pixels per inch at the printed size. A picture printed 10 cm wide (3.94 inches) needs about 1,181 pixels across. A full A4 page at 300 pixels per inch is 2,480 by 3,508 pixels.
- As a favicon or avatar: small is fine. A few hundred pixels is generous.
Work backwards from a real case. A card says 3,000 × 2,000 px. Printed 15 cm wide (5.9 inches), that is roughly 508 pixels per inch: crisp. Printed across a full A4 page width of 8.27 inches, it is about 363 pixels per inch, still good. A card that says 600 × 400 px would print at about 73 pixels per inch on the same page and look soft, whatever tool got it out.
The file size on the card is not a quality measure on its own. It depends on the format and the compression the original author chose.
When nothing comes out
Not every picture you can see on a page is a stored picture.
- Vector graphics. Charts, maps, logos and diagrams exported from design and spreadsheet programs are often made of lines, curves and fills. There is no picture to extract. Capture the page with PDF to JPG, or ask for the source file.
- Scans. A scanned page is one big picture per page. Extracting gives you the scanner’s page images, which is what you want only if you are re-processing the scan. For searchable text, run OCR PDF instead.
- Unsupported formats. Some scanners and archive tools store pictures as JPEG 2000. In our test of a six-page scanned letter, all 11 pictures used it, and the tool reported each as not written out instead of silently skipping it.
- Very small inline pictures. A rarely used form that writes tiny pictures directly into the page instructions is not covered.
If the tool finds no pictures, it tells you so and points to the page-image route, rather than handing you an empty ZIP.
Before you reuse it
Being able to pull a picture out of a file does not give you the right to use it. A stock photograph, a press picture or a company’s artwork is still owned by someone, and the licence for the original usually does not stretch to a new use. Your own photographs and pictures you have permission for are fine. For the rest, check the licence or ask.
One practical point: a JPEG is copied out unchanged, so any camera or location details stored in the photograph itself travel with it. If you plan to publish the picture, check those details first. Our guide to hidden data in PDFs covers what else rides along in files.
Tidying up afterwards
- Rename the files. The tool names them after the PDF, page and order, such as report-page02-image1.jpg. Give the keepers names that say what they show.
- Keep the original PDF. It is your record of where the pictures came from and what the document said about them.
- Resize for the web. A 6,000-pixel photograph is wasteful on a web page. Scale it to the width you need in an image editor before you publish.
- Going the other way? To build a PDF from pictures, use JPG to PDF.
Frequently asked questions
Can I get the original photo out of a PDF?
Often, yes. If the photo was placed in the PDF as a picture, it can be copied out at the size and quality stored in the file. If the PDF only holds a drawing or a flattened scan, what you can recover is limited by what is stored.
Why is the extracted picture smaller than it looked on the page?
A page can draw a picture at any size. The file holds the pixels it was given, and that number is what you get back. A small picture stretched across a page stays small.
Is a screenshot good enough?
For a quick look, yes. For anything you will print or publish, a screenshot is capped by your screen resolution and is compressed again, so extracting the stored picture is better.
Will the picture keep its transparent background?
If the PDF stores a transparency mask with the picture, it is saved as a PNG with that transparency. A picture that was flattened onto a white page has no transparency to recover.
Is it legal to reuse pictures I extract?
Only if you have the right to use them. Extracting a picture does not change who owns it, so check the licence or ask the owner for anyone else’s work.