Convert AI to PNG
An Illustrator file has no pixels. It has instructions — lines, curves, fills — and a size measured in points, so converting one is really a question of what resolution to draw it at. Ask at 72 dpi, the default almost everywhere, and a poster comes back the size of a postage stamp. This renders at 150.
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Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Rendered at 150 dpi, not the 72 that produces tiny files
- Transparency preserved
- No Illustrator and no Adobe account
- Reads the modern PDF-based AI format
How to use AI to PNG
- 1
Add the AI file
Drop it in. Modern Illustrator files are PDF underneath, which is what makes them readable without Illustrator at all.
- 2
It is rendered at 150 dpi
That is roughly twice the default, and the difference between a usable image and a tiny one. A 200-point drawing becomes 417 pixels wide.
- 3
Download the PNG
Lossless, with transparency intact. Sharp at the size it was rendered.
How it works
The file is handed to Ghostscript through ImageMagick with the rendering resolution set to 150 dpi before the file is read — a detail that matters, because resolution is a read-time setting and has no effect if applied afterwards. The drawing is rasterized at that resolution and encoded as PNG with its alpha channel intact.
Points, pixels, and why conversions come out small
This is the single thing that goes wrong most often with vector conversions, and it is not a bug in any particular tool.
A vector file has no pixels. It has geometry, in points — 72 to the inch, the unit typography has used for centuries. A logo that is "200 by 150" is 200 by 150 points, which is about 2.8 inches wide on paper and no particular number of pixels at all.
To make an image, something must choose a resolution. Almost every default is 72 dpi, because that makes the arithmetic disappear: one point becomes one pixel. And so a perfectly good logo becomes a 200-pixel image, and the person doing the converting concludes the file was low quality.
Rendering at 150 dpi makes the same file 417 pixels wide — measured, not estimated. Enough for a website; not so large that Ghostscript spends a minute on a poster.
When you need it bigger
Do not enlarge the PNG. Enlarging pixels adds no detail and softens edges that were sharp.
Convert to PDF instead with /ai-to-pdf. The artwork stays vector — verified: the PDF contains no embedded images at all, and renders 1667 by 1250 at 600 dpi from a source that is nominally 200 by 150. From that PDF you can render at any size, or hand it straight to a printer, who would rather have the vectors anyway.
What an .ai file really is
Since Illustrator 9, a .ai file has been a PDF. Adobe stores its own editable
representation inside, alongside a completely standard PDF version of the same
artwork, so that other software can open it.
That is why converting one does not require Illustrator, and why a file renamed
from .pdf to .ai usually works. It is also why very old Illustrator files
behave differently: before that change they were pure PostScript, and some are
old enough that the drawing conventions have moved on.
Examples
A logo from a brand pack
A 200 by 150 point logo renders 417 by 313 pixels — big enough for a website header rather than a thumbnail.
An illustration for a slide
PNG keeps the transparent background, so the illustration sits on the slide's own color instead of a white box.
Frequently asked questions
Why does resolution matter for a vector file?
Because the source has no resolution at all. An AI file describes shapes at sizes measured in points — a typographic unit — and a point becomes a pixel only when something decides how many pixels there are per inch. The universal default is 72, which makes one point one pixel, so a 200-point drawing becomes a 200-pixel image. That is why vector conversions so often come back unusably small. 150 dpi is used here, which is enough for a website and quick enough to finish inside the job's time limit.
Can I get a bigger image?
Not by re-converting at a higher number here — the resolution is fixed at 150. What works instead is converting to PDF with /ai-to-pdf, which keeps the artwork as real vectors, and then rendering that at whatever size you need. That is the honest route to a poster-sized file, and it does not involve enlarging pixels.
Will it work with any .ai file?
Modern ones, yes. Since Illustrator 9 an .ai file has been a PDF with Illustrator's own data attached, so anything that reads PDF can render it. Files from the 1990s are pure PostScript and older still may not open. If yours is very old, exporting it to EPS from any program that can open it gives you /eps-to-png, which handles that shape.
Is transparency kept?
Yes. PNG has an alpha channel and it is used, so a logo drawn on nothing arrives on nothing. For JPG the transparency has to become a solid color — /ai-to-jpg uses white and says so.
Does my file leave my computer?
Yes. Rendering PostScript and PDF safely needs Ghostscript with its sandbox enabled, which runs on our server rather than in a browser. The upload and the result are both deleted within 30 minutes by a timer, and nothing is stored, indexed or kept against an account — there is no account.
Further reading
- Interlacing a PNG Made It 27% Bigger and Did Not HelpPNG has an interlacing option that shows a rough version of the image while it loads, in the same spirit as progressive JPEG. Unlike progressive JPEG, it is reliably and substantially more expensive — and the preview it produces is worse. Here is what it cost on two very different images.
- PNG's Maximum Compression Setting Is Free and Nobody Uses ItPNG has a compression level from 0 to 9 that almost nobody changes, partly because the name suggests a quality trade-off that does not exist. Every level produces a bit-identical image; the only thing that varies is how long the encoder spends looking for savings. Here is what the highest setting is worth.