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BMP to PDF converter

BMP → PDF turned our 80×50 Windows bitmap into a one-page 2,354 byte image PDF with a 60×37.5 pt page.

  • Converted with Image engine · nothing stored
  • Free: 5 conversions a day · 5 MB each
  • Higher limits →

From real runs

What you get — and what changes

  • Visible bitmap Kept

    The blue rectangle and pale background rendered correctly when the PDF page was rasterized for inspection.

  • Page count Changed

    The single BMP input became a single PDF page rather than a multi-page document.

  • Page size Changed

    The 80×50 px BMP became a 60×37.5 pt page in the tested API output.

  • pageSize option Lost

    Passing pageSize as Letter produced the same measured page rectangle as the default BMP → PDF run.

  • Selectable text Lost

    The BMP letters became embedded image pixels in the PDF; PyMuPDF extracted no text.

  • File size Changed

    The 12,054 byte BMP became a 2,354 byte PDF because the image compressed inside a page wrapper.

Sample conversions

Bitmap proof for upload

Input
An 80×50 24-bit BMP with a blue filled rectangle and a short white label.
Output
A one-page 2,354 byte PDF. The rendered page sampled the expected blue center, but contained no text layer.

Legacy scan exported as BMP

Input
A single-page bitmap scan from an older Windows scanning tool that a portal would not accept directly.
Output
An image-only PDF acceptable as a document wrapper. Search, copy, and redaction still required OCR afterward.

A real BMP → PDF run

We converted our BMP sample (703 KB) with Image engine on 2026-10-20. It took 16 ms and produced a 12 KB PDF file, 98% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.

Input · sample.bmp · 703 KB

600 × 400 px, 24-bit

Width
600
Height
400
Encoding
24-bit

Output · sample.pdf · 12 KB

PDF 1.4, 1 page, no text layer, 1 image object

Version
1.4
Pages
1
Images
1
Text layer
no
  • Image metadata stripped from output.

Is your file a scan?

BMP → PDF is a wrapper for pixels. If the bitmap is a scan, check whether text can be selected in the resulting PDF; if not, run OCR or Deep Read.

Options and when to change them

background
Use when a BMP variant carries alpha or when resize padding should render on a deliberate paper color.
width
Resize the bitmap before PDF creation if the source capture is too large or too small for the page.
height
Set with width for an exact raster page size before wrapping it in PDF.
fit
Use contain or cover when resizing into a fixed raster box before the PDF is written.

Do it yourself

Pillow 11

bash
from PIL import Image

Image.open("in.bmp").convert("RGB").save("out.pdf")

This makes an image-only PDF. Add OCR if the bitmap contains text that users need to search.

BMP to PDF by API or MCP

The HTTP API and the MCP server run the exact engine this page uses (Image engine); the response carries the same warnings the web converter shows. Check support first with GET /api/v1/pairs?from=bmp&to=pdf.

curl
curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@input.bmp" -F "from=bmp" -F "to=pdf" \
  -F 'options={"dpi":96}' \
  --output output.pdf

Options this engine accepts for BMP → PDF

KeyApplies toTypeDefault
dpiReading BMPnumber96
widthWriting PDFnumber0
heightWriting PDFnumber0
fitWriting PDFcontain · cover · fillcontain
qualityWriting PDFnumber90
backgroundWriting PDFstring#ffffff
stripMetadataWriting PDFbooleantrue
API reference

When this is the wrong conversion

  • Use BMP → PNG when the target only needs an image and exact raster pixels matter.
  • Use BMP → JPG for photo-like bitmaps where a smaller opaque image is enough.
  • Use make-pdf-searchable after conversion when the BMP is a scanned document.

BMP to PDF questions

Does BMP → PDF make a searchable PDF?

No. The tested PDF returned zero text from PyMuPDF because the bitmap label remained image data.

Can I force a Letter page?

The local API did not honor a pageSize Letter probe for this pair. Resize the raster first if you need different page geometry.

Why was the PDF smaller than the BMP?

The BMP was mostly raw 24-bit pixel data. The PDF embedded a compressed representation and came out smaller for this simple sample.