PDF & images

Three operations bridge PDFs and images: rasterize pages to PNG, get a quick page-1 thumbnail, and build a PDF from images.

PDF=$(base64 -w0 input.pdf)     # macOS: base64 -i input.pdf

PDF to images

POST /v1/pdf/to-image renders pages to PNG. Returns JSON:

curl -X POST https://api.pdf-forge.dev/v1/pdf/to-image \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PDFFORGE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"pdf\": \"$PDF\", \"dpi\": 150, \"pages\": [\"1\", \"2\"]}"

{
  "pages": [
    { "page": 1, "width": 1240, "height": 1754,
      "image": "<base64 PNG>", "format": "png" }
  ],
  "page_count": 2
}

const result = await client.pdf.toImage(pdfBytes, {
  dpi: 150,
  pages: ["1", "2"],
});
// result.pages[0].png: Uint8Array — ready to write to disk

Field	Type	Description
`pdf`	string	Required. Base64 PDF.
`dpi`	number	Render resolution. Higher = sharper and heavier.
`pages`	string[]	Page selection (`["1", "3-5"]`). Default: all pages.

Thumbnail

POST /v1/pdf/thumbnail renders page 1 only and returns the PNG binary directly (default 72 dpi — small on purpose):

curl -X POST https://api.pdf-forge.dev/v1/pdf/thumbnail \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PDFFORGE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"pdf\": \"$PDF\"}" \
  --output thumbnail.png

Optional dpi overrides the resolution. Ideal for file pickers and document lists.

Images to PDF

POST /v1/pdf/from-images builds a PDF with one page per image (PNG/JPG), in order:

curl -X POST https://api.pdf-forge.dev/v1/pdf/from-images \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $PDFFORGE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d "{\"images\": [\"$(base64 -w0 scan1.jpg)\", \"$(base64 -w0 scan2.jpg)\"]}" \
  --output scans.pdf

const pdf = await client.pdf.fromImages([scan1Bytes, scan2Bytes]);

to-image + from-images = flatten

Chaining the two rasterizes a PDF: every page becomes pixels. That is how you make a redaction irreversible on scanned documents — nothing survives under the black boxes.

There is also POST /v1/pdf/from-url, an alias of URL to PDF.

Next steps

True redaction — the flatten use case.
Inspect — check effective image DPI in a PDF.
Assemble & split — merge the scanned PDF with others.

PDF to images

Thumbnail

Images to PDF

Next steps

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