Convert PNG to PDF

Why screenshots make good PDF pages

Screenshots are full of hard edges: small type, thin lines, flat areas of color. PNG stores them without loss, and Octoolo keeps it that way inside the PDF. There is no JPEG-style haze around letters, so a 9-point menu label is as readable in the PDF as on your monitor.

With Same as picture, each screenshot becomes a page of its own shape, one point per pixel: a 1920 × 1080 capture of a full HD screen becomes a wide page, and a tall phone screenshot a narrow, tall one. Nothing is cropped and nothing is padded, so what you captured is exactly what the reader sees. With A4 or Letter, each capture is shrunk to fit inside the margin on a standard page, sideways for wide captures, which is the better choice for a guide that will be printed.

Diagrams, charts exported from other programs and scanned line drawings saved as PNG get the same treatment.

Transparent PNGs

Logos, icons and diagrams often have a transparent background; ordinary screenshots rarely do. Octoolo keeps that transparency in the PDF. A PDF page is white underneath, so in a reader the see-through parts look white, as they would on paper.

To put a transparent logo on top of an existing page, rather than on a page of its own, open the PDF and use the Picture tool instead. It places the image on the page with no white box around it, at the spot you click, and you can drag it into place and size it; see add an image to a PDF.

If you need the opposite, a page saved as a picture, PDF to JPG turns PDF pages into JPG files with a white background.

What a screenshot PDF can and cannot do

• Searching. The words in a screenshot are part of the picture, so they cannot be searched or selected in the PDF. To get them out as text, use image to text in the Photo Editor, which reads them with Windows' own text recognition.
• File size. Screenshots of apps and web pages are usually compact as PNG. Photos saved as PNG are not, and are better turned into JPG first with PNG to JPG.
• Other formats. JPG, WebP, GIF and BMP open alongside PNG. WebP, GIF and BMP are converted to PNG, and only a GIF's first frame is used.
• Page size. A4, Letter or the screenshot's own shape, chosen under Page size; the margin is yours to set.
• Order. Pages follow the list, not the file names, so move them into place before pressing Make PDF.

Uses: guides, bug reports and records

A PDF of screenshots makes a quick manual. Capture each step of a task, put the pages in order, mark the right button on each, and a colleague can follow along without you. The same goes for a bug report with every screen in sequence, a record of an online order or booking, or proof that a setting was changed on a given day.

Add page numbers so people can say “see page 4”, and when the guide grows, merge new screenshots into it. A watermark such as DRAFT marks a guide that is still changing, and keeping the PNGs makes it easy to swap one screen later. Because everything happens on your PC, screenshots of private screens, such as bank pages or admin panels, never pass through a website.