Softonic

Extract Images from PDF

Step 1 / 3 Upload PDF

Upload a PDF and recover every embedded image at its original resolution. The extractor walks the PDF object tree, finds /XObject /Image entries, and exports each one as a PNG, no screenshot, no quality loss from rasterizing the whole page. Works with scans, photo-heavy reports, product catalogs and brochures.

How to extract images from a PDF

  1. 1

    Upload the PDF

    Drop a single file; encrypted PDFs must be unlocked first.

  2. 2

    Scan the object tree

    The extractor enumerates every image XObject across all pages.

  3. 3

    Preview the results

    You see each image as a thumbnail with its page number and dimensions.

  4. 4

    Download individually or as ZIP

    Grab a single asset or export everything in one archive, named `image-p1-1.png`.

How images live inside a PDF

A PDF stores images as separate resources (/XObject streams) referenced from page content. The extractor reads each stream in its native encoding and reconstructs the file the author embedded.

Formats you will see

PDF filter What you receive Typical source
/DCTDecode PNG (from a JPEG) Photos, product shots, scans
/FlateDecode + RGB PNG Logos, charts, UI screenshots
/JPXDecode PNG (from JPEG 2000) High-resolution archival scans
/CCITTFaxDecode PNG (from a scan) Black-and-white scanned text
/JBIG2Decode PNG (converted) Compressed scanned documents

The extractor always hands you PNG: it re-encodes the raw pixels in your browser, so JPEG, JPEG 2000 and CCITT sources arrive as PNG too.

What it will not recover

  • Vector illustrations. Logos drawn with PDF path operators are not images, they live in the content stream, not as XObjects. Use a PDF-to-SVG tool for those.
  • Background colors and gradients. Those are page-level drawing, not embedded assets.
  • Text rendered as outlines. Appears to be “graphics” but is not an image object.

Tips when working with the export

  • Check the dimensions. A 300x300 thumbnail on the page may actually be a 3000x3000 original scaled down at render time. You get the source pixels, not the display size.
  • Respect the license. Being able to extract an image does not grant rights to reuse it. Stock images in a PDF remain stock images when pulled out.
  • Scanned documents. If every page produces one giant image with text baked in, the PDF is a scan. Run OCR on the exported PNGs to recover the text.

Frequently Asked Questions

PDF pages can apply a transformation matrix to how an image is drawn (flip, rotate, skew). The extractor returns the stored bitmap, raw pixels. If a publisher stored the image upside down and flipped it at render time, the export will look upside down. Rotate it back in any image editor.

Only after you unlock them. Run the file through a PDF unlock tool first, providing the owner password, and then extract.

Yes. Images are added in page order and every filename carries its page number, for example image-p1-2.png, so you can tell which page each image came from.

No. The source PDF is opened and read entirely in your browser and never sent to the server. Only the generated ZIP of extracted images is uploaded to create the session-protected result; it is kept for up to 7 days and then deleted.

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