Enhanced Metafile (EMF) to PNG converter

EMF → PNG turns the vector pictures that Windows and Office use for charts, diagrams and clip-art into an image any website, phone or Mac preview shows.

Converted with Office engine → Image engine · input deleted within 24 h
Free: 5 conversions a day · 5 MB each
Higher limits →

From real runs

What you get — and what changes

Element	Result	What happens
Picture area	Kept	The PNG is trimmed to what the EMF draws: a 28 × 30 mm server clip-art became 177 × 185 pixels with a small white margin, not a whole page.
Charts and text	Kept	An EMF+ burndown chart kept its bars, rotated sprint labels, axis numbers and the vertical forecast caption.
Size of large pictures	Changed	Pictures wider than an A4 page are scaled down first: a 316 mm wide chart rendered at 885 × 498 pixels at 144 DPI, so set width or dpi when you need more pixels.
EMF+ gradients	Kept	A radial path gradient from light to deep blue rendered smoothly; star shapes with multi-colour gradients in the libUEMF test sheet came out darker than in Windows.
Legacy code-page text	Changed	Hebrew chart labels stored in an 8-bit Windows code page came out as unrelated symbols, while the digits and bars were right.
Transparency	Lost	The background is white even when the EMF itself has no background, so clip-art does not sit transparently on a coloured page.
Bitmaps inside the EMF	Changed	Some EMF files carry a bitmap rather than vectors; a Hello World sample was a small embedded picture and looks soft at any size.

Picture area Kept
The PNG is trimmed to what the EMF draws: a 28 × 30 mm server clip-art became 177 × 185 pixels with a small white margin, not a whole page.
Charts and text Kept
An EMF+ burndown chart kept its bars, rotated sprint labels, axis numbers and the vertical forecast caption.
Size of large pictures Changed
Pictures wider than an A4 page are scaled down first: a 316 mm wide chart rendered at 885 × 498 pixels at 144 DPI, so set width or dpi when you need more pixels.
EMF+ gradients Kept
A radial path gradient from light to deep blue rendered smoothly; star shapes with multi-colour gradients in the libUEMF test sheet came out darker than in Windows.
Legacy code-page text Changed
Hebrew chart labels stored in an 8-bit Windows code page came out as unrelated symbols, while the digits and bars were right.
Transparency Lost
The background is white even when the EMF itself has no background, so clip-art does not sit transparently on a coloured page.
Bitmaps inside the EMF Changed
Some EMF files carry a bitmap rather than vectors; a Hello World sample was a small embedded picture and looks soft at any size.

Sample conversions

Office clip-art

Input: 45,876-byte EMF, 28.4 × 29.7 mm server-and-user icon.
Output: 177 × 185 PNG of 20,506 bytes; with width 512 it became 512 × 535 and 26,848 bytes.

EMF+ burndown chart

Input: 233,976-byte EMF with EMF+ records, 316 × 161 mm, red and green stacked bars.
Output: 885 × 498 PNG of 45,402 bytes; 2.0 s to lay out and 0.1 s to render.

A real Enhanced Metafile (EMF) → PNG run

We converted our Enhanced Metafile (EMF) sample (45 KB) with Office engine → Image engine on 2026-10-20. It took 1.6 s and produced a 20 KB PNG file, 55% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.

Input · sample.emf · 45 KB

45,876 bytes

Output · sample.png · 20 KB

177 × 185 px, 8-bit, colour type 2

Width: 177
Height: 185
Encoding: 8-bit, colour type 2

PDF pages rendered as images; selectable text is not preserved.

Options and when to change them

width: Set the pixel width you need; vector EMFs redraw cleanly at any size, so 2000 is as sharp as 200.
dpi: Use 300 to double the default pixel size of small clip-art.

Do it yourself

Inkscape

bash

inkscape chart.emf --export-type=png --export-width=1600

Inkscape's EMF import ignores many EMF+ records, so Office charts saved as EMF+ only can come out empty.

LibreOffice

bash

soffice --headless --convert-to png chart.emf

Writes the picture centred on an A4 page at 96 DPI; crop the white space yourself.

Enhanced Metafile (EMF) to PNG by API or MCP

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

curl

curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@input.emf" -F "from=emf" -F "to=png" \
  -F 'options={"width":0}' \
  --output output.png

Options this engine accepts for Enhanced Metafile (EMF) → PNG

Key	Applies to	Type	Default
width	Writing PNG	number	0
height	Writing PNG	number	0
fit	Writing PNG	contain · cover · fill	contain
quality	Writing PNG	number	90
background	Writing PNG	string	#ffffff
stripMetadata	Writing PNG	boolean	true

API reference

When this is the wrong conversion

If the picture will be scaled in a web page or document, EMF → SVG keeps it as vectors.
If the EMF came out of a Word or PowerPoint file, converting that document to PDF often keeps more context than the picture alone.

Enhanced Metafile (EMF) to PNG questions

How do I open an EMF file on a Mac?

macOS Preview does not reliably open EMF. Convert it to PNG for viewing, or to PDF if you want to keep it as vectors.

What is the difference between EMF and EMF+?

EMF+ is a newer layer of drawing records Office adds for anti-aliasing, transparency and gradients, usually alongside plain EMF records. We read both; gradients in complex EMF+ shapes are the part most likely to differ from Windows.

Why is my PNG smaller than expected?

Large EMFs are fitted to an A4 width before rendering. The drawing is vector, so ask for more pixels with width or dpi and it will stay sharp.