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How to get the pictures out of a PDF on a Mac

Save the photos inside a PDF as picture files on a Mac: one at a time with Preview, or every one at full quality with a free command that copies them unchanged.

The problem

A brochure, report or catalogue has a photo you need as a picture file. Copying it from the page gives you something blurry, and you want the original.

How do I save an image from a PDF on a Mac?

For one picture, use Preview. It is quick, but it copies what is on screen, so zoom in before you select for a sharper result.

  1. Open the PDF in Preview and choose Tools > Rectangular Selection.
  2. Drag around the picture and press Command C.
  3. Choose File > New from Clipboard, then File > Export and pick JPEG or PNG.

How do I extract all images from a PDF at full quality?

Use pdfimages, part of the free poppler tools. It reads the pictures stored inside the PDF rather than what is drawn on screen:

brew install poppler
mkdir images
pdfimages -list brochure.pdf
pdfimages -all brochure.pdf images/img

-list shows every picture with its size first. -all saves each one in the format it is stored in, so a JPEG comes out as the same JPEG, with no loss. We tested it on a PDF made from a 6016 by 6016 picture: -list reported one JPEG at 6016 by 6016, and -all wrote it out at that size, the same bytes as were stored. -png instead converts every picture to PNG, which is larger and gains nothing for a photo.

Why is the extracted image lower quality than I expected?

Because that is how it was stored. A PDF often holds a smaller or more compressed copy of a photo than the original, and no tool can recover detail the file never had. pdfimages -list shows the stored size before you extract anything.

How do I save whole pages as pictures instead?

That is a different job: see PDF to JPG. Simply PDF does it for free at up to print sharpness.

Our take

Run pdfimages -list before anything else. It tells you in one line whether the picture you want is worth extracting at all; a 400 pixel thumbnail inside the PDF stays a 400 pixel thumbnail, and then the better move is to ask the sender for the original.

Measured on 16 October 2026 on a MacBook Air (M1), macOS 27.0.1, with pdfimages from poppler on a PDF made by sips from a 6016 by 6016 image. Made files only.

Questions

How do I save an image from a PDF on a Mac?

Select it in Preview with Rectangular Selection, copy, choose File > New from Clipboard and export as JPEG or PNG.

How do I extract all images from a PDF at full quality?

Use pdfimages -all from the free poppler tools in Terminal. It copies each picture out exactly as stored.

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