PNG to Text Converter

Q: Can I save the text as Markdown instead of TXT?

Yes. Switch **Output** to **Markdown** and headings and lists the reader detects are marked up with # and - signs, which pastes cleanly into note apps, GitHub and wikis.

Q: Is there a way to get PNG text into Word with the layout?

Use [PNG to Word](/png-to-word), which keeps columns, tables and pictures in a .docx. This page is for when you want the words alone.

Get the words out of a PNG as plain text. Upload the image, press Recognize text and download a .txt file, or copy the result straight into an email, a ticket or a translation tool.

or drop PDF, JPG, JPEG … files here ·

Max 95 MB per file· Up to 20 files· Deleted after 30 minutes

Output

Document language

Output

Text type

Files are processed on our servers and deleted after 30 minutes.

How to use this tool

1
Add the PNG files
Drop in up to 20 PNG images, each up to 95 MB. JPG, WebP, HEIC and other images work too.
2
Keep plain text
Output is set to Plain text (.txt) and Text layout to Plain text flow, so you get one clean run of text. Change Document language for non-English images.
3
Recognize text
Press Recognize text and download the .txt, named after each PNG. Open it in any editor, or paste it where you need it.

PNG is the friendliest image format for text recognition: it keeps every pixel exactly as it was drawn, so letters arrive with the same sharp edges they had on screen.

Why PNG to text works better than most image formats

PNG became a W3C Recommendation in 1996, designed as a patent-free replacement for GIF, and its compression is lossless: the file you open is pixel for pixel the file that was saved. JPEG works differently. It splits an image into 8 × 8 pixel blocks and simplifies each one, which leaves faint smudges and halos around high-contrast edges. On a photo nobody notices; around a thin black letter on white, those halos blur exactly the edges a recognizer measures.

That is why most images with text worth extracting are already PNGs. Screenshots on iPhone, macOS and Windows are saved as PNG by default, design tools such as Figma export UI frames as PNG, and slides exported as images usually are too. The same text saved as a low-quality JPEG is still readable, just with more misread characters in small sizes.

Not every PNG is pixel-perfect, though. An image that went through a chat app or a social network may have been resized or recompressed on the way, and a PNG that started life as a JPEG keeps its artifacts. When you have a choice, use the original export. For screenshots of errors, tables and conversations, screenshot to text covers the details of each case.

PNG

Portable Network Graphics

PNG is a lossless raster format published in 1996 by the PNG Development Group and later standardised by the W3C and ISO. It keeps every pixel exactly, supports full alpha transparency and handles text, sharp edges and flat colours without artefacts. That precision makes it ideal for screenshots, logos, icons and interface graphics. The trade-off is size: photographs saved as PNG are often several times larger than the same photo as JPEG or WebP. All browsers, operating systems and editors open PNG files.

Compression: Lossless
Transparency: Yes
Animation: No
Introduced: 1996 · PNG Development Group

PNG converter

TXT

Plain text

A TXT file contains only plain characters with no formatting, fonts, images or layout. Modern text files are usually encoded in UTF-8, which covers every language, though older files may use other encodings and show garbled characters. Plain text is tiny, never becomes obsolete and opens on every device, from phones to servers. It cannot hold bold text, tables or pictures, so structure must be expressed with spacing or simple markup.

Compression: –
Transparency: –
Animation: –
Introduced: –

TXT converter

People convert PNG to text to reuse the words locked in an image, a mockup from a designer, an exported slide or an infographic, as plain characters they can paste, search or translate.

How large the letters in a PNG need to be

16 px web text on a standard display

≈ 8 px

Height of a lowercase x in the PNG. Readable to you, borderline for recognition.

2× taller letters

Same page at 200% zoom or on a 2× display

≈ 16 px

Letters have enough pixels for clear strokes, and misreads drop sharply.

Colored fringes and small UI text in PNG screenshots

Subpixel renderingClearType · subpixel antialiasing: A way of drawing text that lights the red, green and blue parts of each screen pixel separately to make small letters look crisper. Windows has used it as ClearType since Windows XP. In a PNG screenshot it shows up as thin colored fringes on the edges of black text, which can confuse recognition at small sizes. Apple dropped subpixel antialiasing in macOS Mojave in 2018, so Mac screenshots have plain gray edges. If small text from a Windows screenshot misreads, zooming in before capturing helps more than any setting.

PNG to text questions

Can it read white text on a dark background?

Usually, yes. Dark-mode screenshots and light-on-dark banners read about as well as dark text on white, as long as the contrast is strong. Gray text on a slightly darker gray reads poorly, and Enhance contrast under Advanced settings is worth a try there.

In what order does text from an infographic come out?

Top to bottom, then left to right within each block that is recognized as a separate region. Callouts placed around a chart or text inside shapes may land between paragraphs where you would not read them. Choose Preserve layout if the position of each label matters more than a clean run of sentences.

What happens to emoji and icons in the PNG?

They are pictures, not characters, so recognition skips them or, now and then, reads one as a stray letter or symbol. Delete those leftovers when you proofread the .txt.

Does a bigger PNG file give better text?

Only if the letters themselves are bigger. A PNG enlarged in an editor after it was captured gets more pixels but no new detail. What helps is capturing the text larger in the first place, by zooming the page or app before you take the image.

Can I save the text as Markdown instead of TXT?

Yes. Switch Output to Markdown and headings and lists the reader detects are marked up with # and - signs, which pastes cleanly into note apps, GitHub and wikis.

Is there a way to get PNG text into Word with the layout?

Use PNG to Word, which keeps columns, tables and pictures in a .docx. This page is for when you want the words alone.