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Rasterize PDF

Flatten every page into a picture of itself. Free, and runs entirely in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded, stored or sent to a server.

About Rasterize PDF

Renders every page and rebuilds the document from the images. Everything that was text becomes a picture of text; every vector becomes pixels; every layer, hidden object, annotation and form field is gone.

That is the point of this tool rather than a side effect, which makes it the odd one out among the appearance tools. Rasterising is how a document with hidden layers becomes one without them, how text under a redaction box stops being recoverable, and how a PDF's active content — scripts, embedded files, malformed font exploits — is neutralised completely: none of it survives, because none of it is carried over.

It is also how a document that renders correctly only in one reader is made to render identically everywhere: whatever your renderer produced is now what the file contains.

Where it helps

  • Genuinely irreversible: hidden text, layers and metadata in the content are gone rather than hidden.
  • The most reliable way to neutralise a PDF's active content.
  • Guarantees identical rendering everywhere, fonts or no fonts.
  • JPEG or PNG per page, and the resolution is yours.
  • The document never leaves your browser.

Limits

  • Everything that made it a PDF is gone: no text, no search, no selection, no accessibility, no links, no forms.
  • Screen readers cannot read the result at all, which makes it an accessibility regression.
  • The file is usually several times larger, sometimes dramatically so.
  • There is no going back — keep the original.
  • A three-hundred-page document at 300 dpi is a great deal of work for a browser tab.

Frequently asked questions

When should I actually use this?

Three cases: making a redaction permanent, neutralising an untrusted document, and locking down a rendering that has to look identical everywhere. Outside those, the cost is too high — every other appearance tool here rasterises as a side effect and says so, but this one is chosen *for* it.

Is my redaction safe now?

Safer. The text under the box is no longer in the file. But check the result and check the metadata: rasterising the pages does not clear the document information dictionary, so run the Metadata tool as well.

Will this make the file smaller?

Usually not. A text page is a few kilobytes as text and several hundred as an image. A document that was already mostly scanned images may come out smaller if the resolution is lower than the originals.

What about accessibility?

A rasterised PDF is unreadable to a screen reader — there is no text to read. That is a real cost, and for anything published to an audience it is usually a reason to find another way.

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