Save page region as image

Save part of a page as an image

Copy or save a rectangular part of a page (a chart, a table, a formula) as an image, save a picture embedded in a document, or take a screenshot of a window.

Available in pre-release 3.7

Hold Ctrl, drag a rectangle over the page, then right-click it and choose Selection → Save As Image… At a glance:

Copy As Image To Clipboard (CmdCopySelectionAsImage): the selected area, at the current zoom.
Save As Image… (CmdSaveSelectionAsImage): the selected area as PNG, JPEG or BMP, at 72 to 1200 DPI.
Selected Image menu: copy, save, crop or resize a picture embedded in the page, at its own resolution.
Take Screenshot… (CmdScreenshot): capture the desktop or a window, then crop and save it.

To turn whole pages into images, see Convert PDF to images.

Select an area #

Hold Ctrl and drag with the left mouse button. A rectangle is drawn over the page.

Drag an edge or a corner of the rectangle to resize it, or drag inside it to move it.
Press Esc, or click an empty part of the page, to remove it.

Note: a plain drag over text selects text, and a right-button drag pans the page. The image commands need a rectangle.

Copy the area to the clipboard #

With a rectangle selected, use any of:

Right-click → Selection → Copy As Image To Clipboard
Ctrl + K, then Copy Selection As Image in Command Palette
Ctrl + C: copies the text inside the rectangle and the image, so a word processor pastes text and an image editor pastes the picture

The image is rendered at the current zoom: zoom in before copying for more pixels. Rotation is kept.

Save the area as an image file #

Select a rectangle.
Start Save As Image…:
- Right-click → Selection → Save As Image…
- Ctrl + K, then Save As Image... in Command Palette
In the Save Selection As Image dialog:
- The path defaults to the document’s folder and name with -sel.png, e.g. report-sel.png (made unique if it exists). Edit it, or use … to browse.
- Pick the format: PNG, JPEG or BMP. The extension follows.
- Pick the DPI: 72, 150, 300 (default), 600 or 1200. The resulting size in pixels is shown next to it. The DPI doesn’t depend on your zoom.
Click Save. The image is written and opened in a new tab.

If the size shows “Too large for this DPI”, pick a lower DPI or a smaller area (the limit is 16384 pixels per side).

Save a picture from the page #

To get a photo or figure that is embedded in the document as an image, right-click it and open Selected Image:

Copy To Clipboard (CmdCopyImage)
Save (CmdSaveImage)
Crop (CmdCropImage)
Resize (CmdResizeImage)
Convert to PDF… (see Convert images to PDF)

You get the image at its own resolution, not at the zoom you view it at. The menu appears only when the mouse is over an image; for text, vector drawings, or a part of an image, use a rectangle and Save As Image… instead.

Save, Crop and Resize open the image editing window:

The path defaults to the document’s folder: <document>_page_<N> with the image’s own extension, e.g. report_page_3.jpg.
Formats: PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, WebP (when Windows has the WebP encoder) and PDF.
If you don’t change the image and keep its format, the original bytes are saved, with no re-compression.
Crop: drag over the image to draw the crop area, then Apply Crop. Arrow keys move an edge by one pixel.
Resize: drag a corner, or use the arrow keys to change width and height by one pixel, then Apply Resize.
Copy puts the current (cropped or resized) image on the clipboard.

For an image file open in SumatraPDF (PNG, JPEG, …), the same commands are in Command Palette: Save Image..., Crop Image..., Resize Image....

Take a screenshot #

Take Screenshot… (CmdScreenshot) captures the desktop and every visible window, including other programs.

Press Ctrl + K and run Take Screenshot....
Thumbnails of the captures appear. Use the arrow keys or the mouse to pick one:
- Enter or a click: open it in the Crop Image window, to crop, resize, pick a format and save.
- Ctrl + C: copy it to the clipboard.
- Esc: cancel.

Screenshots are saved by default in the Screenshots folder of the SumatraPDF data folder, named after the program (e.g. SumatraPDF.png).

Set a screenshot hotkey #

To take a screenshot with a key, even when SumatraPDF isn’t in front:

Press Ctrl + K and run Set Screenshot Hotkey... (CmdSetScreenshotHotkey).
Press the key combination, e.g. Alt + PrtSc, and click Set. Remove clears it.

This saves a Shortcuts entry for CmdScreenshot with a Global key; you can also write it yourself (see Customize keyboard shortcuts). There is no hotkey by default.

Tips #

Use Save As Image… at 300 DPI or more for print; Copy As Image To Clipboard is fine for a chat or an e-mail.
Use Ctrl + 4 (Zoom To Selection) to fill the window with the rectangle before copying it at a higher resolution.
Use the image context menu’s Save for photos: you get the original file, not a re-rendered copy.
Use sumatrapdf-tool extract to save every image of a PDF at once.