The first artboard of an Illustrator document as a PNG anyone can open, at the dpi you pick.
An AI file is an Illustrator document. A PNG is what everyone else can open without owning Illustrator.
A customer, a printer, a colleague in marketing: plenty of them are handed an .ai file and have no way to look at it. A PNG opens in a browser, a phone, a slide and a chat window, so the artwork can be reviewed, approved or published without anybody installing anything.
An Illustrator document is organised in artboards, and the first one is what this converter renders: the logo, the poster, the label or the icon exactly as it was composed, at the resolution you pick.
PNG is lossless and universally read, which makes it the safe format for a design review, a documentation page or an asset that will be placed in another tool. Nothing is re-typed and nothing has to be exported twice.
One artboard, rendered flat, sized by the resolution you choose.
The artboard is the rectangle the designer worked in, and it becomes the image. Only the first artboard is converted, which is the one Illustrator shows when the document opens; a second artboard with a variation or a back side is not part of the answer.
Everything the document draws is rendered together — shapes, gradients, placed pictures, effects — with a white page behind it. Cut-out areas are white in the PNG rather than transparent, because the artboard is a sheet of paper in Illustrator too.
An artboard measured in points grows with the dpi: a 200 × 100 pt artboard is 200 × 100 px at 72 dpi, 417 × 208 px at 150 dpi and 833 × 417 px at 300 dpi. Only the number of pixels changes, never the layout.
One artboard means one file, so the download is a single PNG carrying the name of the document you uploaded — no archive and nothing to unpack.
Illustrator can save a document in two shapes, and only one of them carries a page other programs can read.
When that option is ticked, Illustrator writes a complete PDF inside the .ai file and appends its own editable data to it. That PDF part is a normal page, so the document opens here and converts exactly like a PDF would. Illustrator has that box ticked by default, so most files from the last fifteen years qualify.
Untick the option and the file becomes Illustrator-only: the part other programs can read is a page that says so, which is why the conversion comes back blank or with a notice. Re-save the document with Create PDF Compatible File switched on, or use File → Export → Export As and choose PDF or SVG — both convert here without trouble.
Documents from version 8 or earlier are not PDF-based at all: they are PostScript programs, the same language EPS is written in. Those are read as PostScript and convert normally, so an old archive is not a dead end.
The resolution decides how many pixels each inch of the artboard gets, and how heavy the file is.
One pixel per point, which is the artboard at its natural size. Enough for a preview, a thumbnail or a picture shown at 100% on a web page, and the lightest of the three. Small labels may need a zoom to read.
Twice the detail in each direction and the default here: sharp on any display, comfortable at normal size and still a reasonable download. This is the setting for a design review, a documentation page or an asset that will be looked at rather than printed.
The density a print service expects. Because PNG is lossless the file gets heavy quickly, so use it for the one artboard that is going to paper and leave the rest at 150 dpi.
No page is rendered past 40 megapixels. A poster artboard asked for at 300 dpi comes back at a lower resolution with a warning that names the dpi actually used, so one document cannot exhaust the server or freeze the download.
What the conversion can and cannot see inside an Illustrator document.
One request renders one artboard. A document with six variations returns the first one, so either move the version you need to the front in Illustrator or export that artboard as a PDF or an SVG and convert that file instead.
A conversion has a wall-clock limit, and a document with hundreds of thousands of paths, a large placed photograph or heavy effects may pass it and stop with a message instead of a half-drawn page. Simplifying the artwork or exporting a single artboard first keeps the conversion short.
Three steps, no account and no software to install.
Drop it on the box or click to browse. One file per run, up to 25 MB. A .ai file
is accepted even when the browser sends it as a generic binary, and a PDF or an EPS works
here too.
150 dpi is preselected and suits screens and email; 72 dpi makes a light preview, 300 dpi a picture that can be printed. PNG is already the chosen format on this page.
The artboard arrives as a single PNG named after the document, ready to be attached, embedded in a page or dropped into a review folder.
A few habits that make an Illustrator hand-off painless.
In Illustrator, File → Export → Export As with the artboard option set to all of them writes one PDF per artboard. Each of those converts here on its own, which is quicker than rearranging the document before every attempt.
If the picture is going to be scaled, cut or edited, a PNG is the wrong end of the trip: AI to SVG writes the shapes out as paths, and SVG to EPS turns them into the PostScript file a print shop may ask for.
An Illustrator document saved with PDF compatibility is a PDF with extra data, so PDF to PNG renders the same page. That page also gives you the choice of every page at once, which matters when the PDF has several sheets.
Yes. There is no account, no payment, no watermark on the picture and no limit on how many documents you convert. A short rate limit is the only restriction, so the service stays usable for everyone else converting at the same time.
The document was saved with Create PDF Compatible File switched off, so the only part other programs can read is a placeholder page. Open it in Illustrator, save it again with that box ticked, or use File → Export As and choose PDF or SVG — both convert here and keep the artwork intact.
No. The document is read on the server, so nothing has to be installed on your machine and Illustrator never has to start. Files saved with PDF compatibility, and old documents from version 8 or earlier, are both handled; only a file saved without PDF compatibility has nothing to render.
Each upload may be 25 MB, one file per run, since the whole document is held while it is rendered. A file that large usually carries a high-resolution placed photograph, and the PDF-compatible copy inside the .ai is often several times bigger than the artwork itself.
Files are processed on our server and not stored. The document is opened once, the artboard is rendered, and only the PNG travels back to your browser, so the download is the only copy of the result.
