PDF to WebP

Draw the pages of a PDF as WebP images — lighter files than the JPG or PNG exports, produced on your own machine.

Runs on your devicePDFWorkingNo account needed

What this tool does

PDF to WebP hands each selected page to pdf.js, which paints it onto a canvas, and the browser's own encoder writes that canvas out as a WebP file. One image comes back per page, carrying the source filename with the page number attached — brochure-p1.webp, brochure-p6.webp — and the summary line reports how many pages were drawn, at what resolution, and what the whole set weighs.

Size is the reason to choose this export over the other two. WebP is normally the smallest of the three at a comparable amount of visible detail, which is what the format was built for. The quality slider runs from 20 to 100 per cent and starts at 88, where pages of type and flat colour compress hard without obvious damage. Resolution is a separate decision: the dpi menu multiplies the page against its native 72-point grid, and the multiplier is capped at eight, so the entry labelled 600 dpi actually renders at 576.

Not every browser will write the format, and the tool refuses to paper over that. A canvas encoder without WebP support quietly returns a PNG under the type you asked for, so the code inspects each blob it receives and stops with a message pointing you at PDF to PNG rather than saving files whose contents do not match their extension. An encoder that returns nothing at all is reported too. This only bites on older browser builds, and the PNG export it names draws pages through the same renderer at the same resolutions — it simply drops the quality slider, because a lossless codec has nothing to trade.

Two things are lost on the way out. Text stops being text — once a page is drawn it is pixels, so the image cannot be searched or copied from, and dropping it back into a document does not bring the words back. And although WebP can carry an alpha channel, this export never uses it: a colour is laid across the canvas before the page is drawn, white unless you change the swatch, so every file is opaque. The work also runs on your own processor, one page at a time with progress shown and a stop control, which is what keeps the document off the network and equally what makes a long report at 300 dpi cost real time and real memory.

How to use it

  1. Add the PDF. One document, or a queue of them. Each file is rendered in turn and lends its own name to the images it produces.
  2. Choose the resolution. 72 dpi for a thumbnail, 150 or 200 for screen use, 300 for print. Pixel count and rendering time both climb with it.
  3. Narrow the pages if you need to. Pages accepts all, a range such as 1-5, a list such as 2,7,9, and the words odd, even, first and last. A spec that matches nothing is refused by name.
  4. Set quality and background. The slider runs from 20 to 100 per cent against the encoder. The colour behind transparency is painted first, because the output is never transparent.
  5. Collect the images. Every file is listed in page order by name and byte size, under badges carrying the page count, the dpi and the total written. Grab them one by one, or press Download all as ZIP when a run has produced several.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Publishing document pages on a site

A pdf webp export gives you the page as a modern image format that loads lighter than the JPG equivalent, which is what a page-weight budget cares about.

Thumbnails for a document library

Render page 1 of every file at 72 dpi and the card previews for a whole shelf of reports cost a fraction of the bandwidth PNG would.

Attaching a page to a ticket or chat

Trackers and chat clients show an image inline where a PDF becomes a download that nobody opens until later.

Slimming an image set you already exported

When a folder of page JPGs is too heavy for the CMS, re-exporting the same pages here is usually shorter work than compressing the JPGs further.

Questions

Does anything about the PDF reach a server?
No. pdf.js and the WebP encoder both sit in this browser tab, so the document is read from disk into memory and no part of it travels. The renderer script is the only thing fetched over the network, and this site hosts it rather than borrowing a third-party CDN. There is no offline cache behind the page, though: reload with the connection down and nothing loads at all.
Why did it tell me to use PDF to PNG?
Because this browser would not produce a WebP. Some canvas encoders ignore the requested type and return a PNG instead, and the check catches that mismatch and stops rather than handing you a file whose contents disagree with its extension.
Can I get a lossless WebP?
Not from this tool. A quality value is always passed to the encoder and the settings hold no lossless switch, so even 100 per cent is the encoder's highest lossy setting. Choose PDF to PNG when nothing at all may be discarded.
Will a .webp file open everywhere?
Browsers and current image viewers handle it. Older desktop software, some print workflows and a few older phones do not, and they tend to fail without saying why. Export JPG instead when you cannot control what opens the file.
Which resolution should I choose?
150 dpi reads well on screen and 300 dpi is what a printer expects. Beyond 300 the file grows faster than any detail you can actually see, and the top entry renders at 576 dpi because the scale multiplier stops at eight.
Will it convert a password-protected PDF?
No. The renderer stops at an encrypted document and names the file in the error. Remove the password with Unlock PDF first, using the one you already hold, then convert the result.
Can I rebuild a searchable PDF from the images?
Not directly — the glyphs are pixels now. Image to PDF will assemble them back into a document, but the text stays unsearchable unless you run PDF OCR over what comes out.

Related tools

  • Merge PDF — Combine several PDFs into one document in the order you choose.
  • Split PDF — Split one PDF into separate documents by page range.
  • Compress PDF — Reduce PDF file size while preserving the quality that matters.
  • PDF to JPG — Export every page of a PDF as a JPG image.
  • JPG to PDF — Turn one or many JPG photos into a single PDF.
  • Protect PDF — Add a password and set permissions on a PDF.