PDF and images are the two most popular file types. They have their own advantages and disadvantages. For example, PDF supports scalable text and vector images, searchable text, multiple pages, embedded fonts, multimedia objects, etc. Images files are usually easier to share on our mobile phones, more widely used on the web. We have discussed how you can change the file format from PDF to image or the other way around in earlier articles. Microsoft has the Print to PDF feature which allows Windows users to convert images to PDF in Windows 10. Mac OS has the system app with the PDF to image and image to PDF conversion support. You can follow this tutorial to convert images to PDF using Preview on Mac.
Today, we will talk about how PDF files can be converted to image files, such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIF, on Mac for free without any third-party PDF editor or image editor.
If you like to extract a small part of a PDF file or PDF page as images, you can take a screenshot on Mac. It is easy and fast. If you have a multiple page PDF file need to convert to image file, you can use the Preview app on Mac. Check out details below.
Convert PDF to image using Preview on Mac
Open Finder on Mac. Find the PDF file which you need to convert. Double click on it to open it with Preview if it is your default PDF viewer on Mac. Otherwise, right click on the PDF, and choose Open with > Preview.
Click File from the top menu bar, choose Export from the drop-down menu. The Export As screen pops up. Type in a file name, choose a location, then click to expand the Format pop-up menu and choose your desired image format, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, HEIF.
When a image format is selected, more settings will be displayed beneath, such as Quality and Resolution. Tweak these settings if like. Then click the Save button to convert the whole PDF file into one image file in the selected format with the selected quality and resolution.
Extract single PDF page as image in Preview
When you open a PDF file in Preview, the sidebar will be hidden by default. Go to its View menu, choose Thumbnails to display PDF page thumbnail view in the left sidebar. On the left side of the Preview window, click a page thumbnail to make it the current active page in Preview. Preview its content on the right pane to make sure it is the page you want to turn into an image file. You may have to scroll down in order to find the page. After that, right click on the page thumbnail, select Export As… from the context menu. Then choose HEIF or JPEG as the output format and save it from Preview to your Mac.
Repeat this process to convert other pages in the PDF to image files, if you want to convert more than one page but not the entire PDF file into images.