How to convert a PDF to SVG

SVG export comes built in to PDF by Zaweba. Open the PDF and choose File > Export > SVG pictures, then pick where to save them. The conversion is done by the app on your PC, with no website, upload or account involved.

SVG is the picture format of the web for anything drawn rather than photographed. Logos, icons, diagrams, maps and charts all suit it, because an SVG can be shown at any size in a browser and still look crisp.

Why people want SVG from a PDF

PDFs and SVGs have a lot in common. Both can describe shapes, lines and text as drawing instructions rather than as a grid of pixels. That's why a logo in a PDF stays sharp however far you zoom in. Exporting to SVG keeps that quality in a format that web pages, browsers and many drawing programs understand directly.

Some common reasons for the conversion are putting a diagram from a report onto a website, getting a logo from a brand guidelines PDF into a format a designer can use, reusing a floor plan or map in a web page, or taking a chart into a vector drawing program to restyle it. Vectornation by Zaweba is a vector drawing app that works with SVG, so a page exported from PDF by Zaweba can carry on there.

Exporting to SVG

Open the PDF in PDF by Zaweba. If you only want one page, it can save time to take that page out first: choose it in the thumbnails and use Pages > Extract to put it in a new tab. Then choose File > Export and pick SVG pictures. Save into an empty folder so the files are easy to find.

Open the result in your browser to check it. Zoom right in on a line or a letter. If it stays sharp, the drawing came across as vector shapes.

What to expect from different pages

How useful the SVG is depends on what the PDF page was made of. Pages created by design programs, office programs and drawing tools are usually made of shapes and text, and they make good SVGs.

Scanned pages are different. A scan is a photograph of paper, so the SVG will simply hold that picture. It won't turn the scan into lines and shapes, and zooming in will show pixels as it would in the PDF.

Photographs inside an otherwise drawn page stay as pictures within the SVG, while the drawn parts round them stay as vectors.

If the page has a lot of white space round the drawing you want, crop it first. Pages > Crop pages lets you drag a rectangle, and Remove white margins trims the edges for you, so the SVG comes out the size of the content rather than a whole sheet.

Picking a different format

SVG is the right choice for drawings going onto the web or into vector software. For a page that's mostly photos, File > Export can save PNG or JPEG pictures at a resolution you choose, which are simpler for most people to use. And if you just want the words, export the text instead.

PDF by Zaweba is free software for Windows that works entirely offline, so artwork and plans stay on your own computer while they change format.