Export a single page PNG from PDF in Preview

Question

Export a single page PNG from PDF in Preview

I routinely post PDF documents on a WordPress blog. Part of my workflow has been to open the PDFs, select a single page that I want to use as the document thumbnail, then export that page as a PNG file. I upload them both to WordPress media library, and voila! I have a PDF and a thumbnail image.

I used Preview to do this in the past. I would display Thumbnails and if I clicked on a single page and exported to a PNG, I would get just that. Now, after the El Capitan upgrade, Preview works differently.

When I export to a PNG now, I get a multi-page PNG file, whether I've selected a single page or not. I cannot for the life of me figure out how to tell Preview "export page 3 of this PDF file as a PNG file."

In the past when I've had a question like this, some helpful soul has been able to say something like "Oh yeah, just hold down the Option key and press E, and it will do what you want." I am hoping that someone can do that again this time.

Does anyone have advice for me? Thanks!

P.S. I did check for a Preview specific discussion before posting in this general El Capitan area. Sorry if I violated some secret protocol that I'm not aware of. 🙂

Posted on Oct 13, 2015 11:07 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Sparkleberry

Level 5

6,167 points

Nov 10, 2015 9:18 AM in response to Mark Lautenschlager

You could also just drag the particular PDF page(s) you want from Preview sidebar to your desktop or other destination and then export them each as PNG.

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Answer 2

Nov 10, 2015 8:54 AM in response to Mark Lautenschlager

I had this problem too. I ended up selecting in the sidebar the page I wanted to export and choosing:

Edit -> Copy

File -> New from Clipboard

This will give you a new one-page file that you can then export to PNG.

I'm sure there's a better solution but in the meantime this might help.

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Answer 3

Jan 9, 2016 12:04 PM in response to Mark Lautenschlager

I do exactly the same thing with my wordpress site and had the same problem with the El Capitan update. Now it's solved from the workarounds posted here, but hopefully the next update will make the workaround no longer necessary.

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