How to split PDF into PNG files in OS X

We were asked recently how to split a PDF file into PNG files on Mac OS X. That’s to say, if the PDF has five pages then you’d want five PNG files produced, one for each page. Here are some options:

Adobe Acrobat
If you have Adobe Acrobat (not to be confused with the free Acrobat Reader) then you an simply open the PDF and select File>Save As and select “PNG”. However, Acrobat is expensive for what it is and there are some free alternatives such as…

PROs: Very easy to do
CONs: Acrobat Pro is expensive and probably not worth the price if this is all you’ll ever use it for.

Third party website
Probably the easiest way is to use a web site such as pdf2png.com. Whilst I’m sure they’re a reputable site and we’ve used them successfully in the past, its always worth thinking twice before uploading anything that may be confidential to a third party site.

PROs: Also very easy
CONs: Can be slow if you need to upload a big pdf. Think about security.

ImageMagick
If you’re comfortable on the command line then you can use ImageMagick to do the heavy lifting. If you don’t have it installed already then we recommend using the installer from Cactus Labs.

Once you have ImageMagick installed, you can fire up the Terminal and use a command like:

convert ~/Desktop/myfile.pdf ~/Desktop/myfile.png

…and ImageMagick should do the rest, including sequentially naming the files. Don’t forget to change the paths to the documents to your own!

PROs: Completely free. Also ImageMagick has lots of other uses if you work with graphics. It’s worth having in your arsenal! For extra credit, you can even get ImageMagick working through Apple’s Automator to build your own custom workflow.
CONs: You need to be reasonably comfortable with using the Terminal.

There are plenty of other ways, but these are the ones that work best in our experience. Let us know if you’ve found any better ways!