How to use PNG to PDF
- 1Add your PNG images — screenshots, diagrams, exports
- 2Arrange them into the order you want as pages
- 3Choose a page size, or let each page fit its image
- 4Build the document
- 5Download the finished PDF
What PNG to PDF does
PNGs usually come from a screen rather than a camera. Screenshots, exported charts, diagrams, logos and UI captures are the typical sources, and they share a visual character: flat areas of colour, hard edges, and often text rendered by software rather than photographed.
That content survives the trip into a PDF perfectly, because the image is embedded losslessly and nothing is re-compressed. It also means the resulting document is a faithful record of what was on screen — which is precisely why PDFs of screenshots are accepted as evidence of an order, a booking or an error message in a way that a re-saved photo often is not.
When to use it
- Screenshots as a record
- A confirmation screen, an error message, a chat thread. Assembled into one PDF with the pages in order, they read as a sequence rather than a folder of files.
- Charts and diagrams for a report
- Exported figures keep their crisp lines and flat fills, so the appendix looks like the source material rather than a compressed copy of it.
- Design exports for review
- Mockups and UI screens become a single document a client can page through and comment on, at exactly the pixel dimensions they were exported at.
- Scanned line art or handwriting
- Pen-on-paper scanned as PNG keeps sharp strokes, where JPEG compression would soften and fringe them.
PNG to PDF settings explained
- Page order
- Images become pages in the order you arrange them. For a sequence of screenshots this is the whole point — the order carries the narrative.
- Fit to image
- Each page takes the pixel dimensions of its image. For screenshots this reproduces the capture exactly, which is what you want when the document is a record of what was on screen.
- Fixed page size
- A4, A3, A5, Letter or Legal. Screenshots are usually landscape and wider than a portrait page, so automatic orientation matters more here than it does for photographs.
- Transparency
- A PNG's alpha channel has no equivalent on a PDF page. Transparent regions are placed over the page's white background, so a logo exported on transparency appears on white rather than carrying its transparency into the document.
- Margin
- White space around the image on a fixed-size page. Worth setting for screenshots, which otherwise run to the paper edge and look cramped when printed.
Starting from PNG or from JPG
| From PNG | From JPG | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical source | Screenshots, diagrams, exports | Camera photos, scans |
| Edge quality | Exact, no artefacts | Slight ringing on hard edges |
| Transparency | Flattened onto white | Never had any |
| Resulting file size | Large for photos, small for flat art | Compact for photos |
Limits and what to expect
- Transparency is flattened onto the page background — a PDF page has no alpha channel of its own.
- PNGs of photographic content make very large PDFs; JPG is the better source for those.
- There is no text layer, so a PDF of screenshots is not searchable even though the screenshots contain text.
- Each image becomes exactly one page; several cannot be placed on a single page.
- Large batches are bounded by the browser tab's memory, since every image is held during assembly.
Troubleshooting
- My transparent logo has a white background now
- A PDF page has no alpha channel, so transparent pixels are placed over the page's white background. If you need the transparency preserved, the image has to stay a PNG — a PDF cannot carry it in this form.
- The PDF is enormous
- PNG stores photographic detail without discarding anything, so photos saved as PNG produce very large files. Convert those images to JPG first, or use the JPG version of this tool.
- My screenshots are cropped on the page
- A landscape screenshot placed on a portrait page has to shrink or overflow. Set orientation to automatic, or use fit-to-image so each page matches its capture exactly.
- I cannot search the text in my screenshots
- The text is pixels, not characters — a screenshot records what the screen looked like, not what it said. Making it searchable requires OCR, which this tool does not do.
Your files and your privacy
Images are read and the document is assembled entirely inside your browser tab. Nothing is uploaded. Screenshots are worth treating carefully here: they frequently capture more than intended — an email in a background tab, a notification, an account number in a sidebar — so keeping the whole operation local is the safer default.
What to use next
FAQ
Does PNG to PDF lose any quality?
No. PNG is lossless and the image is embedded without re-encoding, so the pixels in the document are exactly the pixels you started with. That is what makes this the right route for screenshots and diagrams, where soft edges would be immediately visible.
What happens to transparency?
It is flattened onto the page's white background. A PDF page has no alpha channel of its own, so a logo exported on transparency will appear on white. If transparency has to survive, the file needs to remain a PNG.
Can I control the page order?
Yes. Drag the images into the order you want before exporting — each one becomes a page.
Which image formats work?
JPG, PNG, WebP, AVIF, GIF and BMP. Formats a PDF cannot embed directly are converted to JPEG automatically.
Why is my PDF of screenshots so large?
PNG does not discard anything, and a high-resolution screen produces a lot of pixels. For screenshots of interfaces the flat colours usually compress well; if your PNGs are actually photographs, converting them to JPG first will shrink the document dramatically.
Should I use PNG or JPG as the source?
PNG when the images come from a screen — screenshots, charts, diagrams, line art — because lossless compression keeps edges perfect. JPG when they come from a camera or a scanner, because photographic content compresses far better that way and PNG would produce an unnecessarily large file.