What happens when you convert EPUB to PNG
- The EPUB is laid out as a book with A4 pages by Calibre, the widely used open-source e-book manager, on our conversion server, with its chapters, headings, images and table of contents, and each page is then drawn as an image by MuPDF at 150 dpi, so a page becomes about 1240 by 1750 pixels.
- A one-page result gives a single PNG; a longer one comes back as a ZIP file with one PNG per page, named page-01.png, page-02.png and so on. Only the first 100 pages are converted, so a whole novel gives its first 100 pages.
- E-books have no fixed pages, so the page breaks are made for A4: they will not match the pages of a printed edition, or what an e-reader shows.
- PNG is lossless, so text and lines stay exactly as crisp as the page rendered them.
- Books bought from a store usually carry DRM, which no honest converter removes. DRM-free books convert normally.
- This conversion runs on our server: the file is uploaded, converted, and deleted together with the result as soon as the result has been sent back to you. Nothing is kept. Files up to 25 MB are accepted.
How to convert EPUB to PNG online
- Press "Choose EPUB files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. Files up to 25 MB each can be converted.
- There are no settings to choose: the converter keeps everything the target format can hold.
- Press "Convert to PNG". The file is uploaded to our conversion server, converted in a few seconds, and deleted together with the result as soon as the result is sent back.
- Save each PNG with its download button. Our server has already deleted both your EPUB and the PNG by then.
Why convert EPUB to PNG?
EPUB files usually come from e-books from stores other than Amazon and free e-book libraries. People convert them to PNG to share a page of a book as a picture: in a chat or a social post, on a website, or in a presentation, or to look at it on a device without an e-book app.
How to convert EPUB to PNG on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android
On Windows
Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your EPUB files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each PNG is saved to your Downloads folder.
On a Mac
Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the EPUB files from Finder onto the drop zone and the PNG files land in Downloads.
On iPhone and iPad
Open the page in Safari and tap Choose EPUB files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted PNG appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image.
On Android
Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose EPUB files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The PNG is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.
Best settings for EPUB to PNG
There are no settings: the book is laid out on A4 pages and each page is rendered at 150 dpi, and at most the first 100 pages are converted.
To read the book, keep the EPUB: it reflows to fit any screen, which page images cannot. To convert a particular chapter, export the book to PDF first and pick the pages you need.
EPUB vs PNG: the differences
| EPUB | PNG | |
|---|---|---|
| Full name | Electronic publication | Portable Network Graphics |
| Type | document | image |
| Created by | the International Digital Publishing Forum | the PNG Development Group |
| First released | 2007 | 1996 |
| Compression | Lossless | Lossless |
| Transparency | n/a | Yes |
| Animation | n/a | No |
| Vector or raster | n/a | Raster |
| Colour | n/a | up to 16 bits per channel with a full alpha channel |
| What it holds | chapters as XHTML pages, with images and a table of contents | up to 16 bits per channel with a full alpha channel |
| In a browser | opens in Apple Books, Google Play Books, Kobo and most e-reader apps; a Kindle needs it sent through Send to Kindle | opens in every browser and image viewer |
| Common uses | e-books from stores other than Amazon and free e-book libraries | screenshots, logos, diagrams and anything with transparency |
| MIME type | application/epub+zip | image/png |
About EPUB and PNG files
What is an EPUB file?
An EPUB is a ZIP archive of web pages, one per chapter, plus a file that lists their order. That is why its text can be extracted with ordinary web tools.
What is a PNG file?
PNG compresses without losing a single pixel, so screenshots and text stay razor sharp, but a photograph saved as PNG is often three to five times the size of the same photo as JPG.
EPUB to PNG not working? Common problems
- "Files up to 25 MB can be converted." Server conversions have a size limit. Compress the images inside the file, or split it, and try again.
- "The conversion took too long and was stopped." Very long or complex files can pass the 90 second limit. Split the file and convert the parts.
- "This file is not really in EPUB format." The converter checks every file before it runs anything, so a file of another format renamed to .epub is refused. Choose the page for its real format.
Convert EPUB to PNG from the command line
Calibre and Poppler do the same on your own computer: the first command lays the book out as a PDF, the second writes one image per page.
ebook-convert input.epub book.pdf --paper-size a4
pdftoppm -r 150 -png book.pdf pageConverting on your own computer keeps the file entirely local, which is worth it for very large or very sensitive documents. For everything else, the converter on this page does it without installing anything.
EPUB to PNG converter FAQ
Will I lose quality converting EPUB to PNG?
The pages are sharp enough to read on any screen at 150 dpi. PNG keeps every pixel exact. The text in an image can no longer be selected or searched.
Why is the PNG a different size from the EPUB?
Each PNG holds a full page of pixels, so the images together are usually much larger than the EPUB, which stores text. PNG pages of mostly text stay small; pages full of photos grow large.
Are my EPUB files uploaded?
Yes, for this conversion. A faithful EPUB to PNG conversion needs Calibre and MuPDF, two open-source tools, which cannot run in a browser. The file travels over an encrypted connection, is converted in a private temporary folder, and is deleted together with the PNG as soon as the result has been sent back to you. We do not keep, read or share it.
Can I convert several EPUB files to PNG at once?
Yes. Select or drop as many files as you like; they are converted one after another and each gets its own download button.
How do I open a PNG file?
PNG opens in every browser and image viewer. PNG is common for screenshots, logos, diagrams and anything with transparency.
Is this EPUB to PNG converter free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no watermark. Because this conversion uses our server, there is a fair-use limit of 25 MB per file and a number of files per hour, which stops the service being overloaded.
Can I convert EPUB to PNG on my phone?
Yes. It works in Safari on iPhone and iPad and in Chrome on Android. The conversion happens on our server, so it is as fast on a phone as on a computer; the PNG is saved to your Downloads folder.