Skip to content

PNG to Plain text converter

PNG to TXT reads a single raster image with Deep Read, so our screenshot sample became UTF-8 text with Markdown-like heading and bullet markers.

  • Converted with AI Deep Read · input deleted within 24 h
  • Free: 5 conversions a day · 5 MB each
  • Higher limits →

From real runs

What you get — and what changes

  • Large heading text Changed

    The heading was captured accurately, but the TXT output prefixed it with a hash character rather than leaving it as bare text.

  • Paragraph wrapping Changed

    The long release-note paragraph was rejoined into one readable line instead of preserving the screenshot's visible wraps.

  • Bulleted list Kept

    All three bullets survived with dash markers, including the dollar amount and the exception-sheet phrase.

  • Date and owner labels Kept

    Owner, due date, and status text were retained as separate label lines, with the ISO-style date unchanged.

  • Color panel Lost

    The blue callout background and border did not appear in TXT because only visible text is emitted.

  • No invented wording Kept

    The run did not add summary prose or guessed fields beyond the words that were visible in the PNG.

  • Runtime Kept

    The 1400 by 1000 PNG completed in 5.0 seconds and consumed one Deep Read credit for the one image.

Sample conversions

Release-note screenshot

Input
1400 by 1000 PNG with a heading, one paragraph about invoice ingestion, three bullets, and a blue owner/date/status callout.
Output
TXT contained '# Quarterly Release Notes', a reflowed paragraph, three dash bullets, and separate Owner, Due, and Status lines. The callout color and border were absent.

Low-contrast inspection image

Input
PNG-style field note with grey text, pressure values, a faint received stamp, and a simulated handwritten sentence.
Output
The same OCR path kept the visible pressure numbers and read the handwritten-style line as 'Sam okayed temp patch'; it did not mark any part illegible.

A real PNG → Plain text run

We converted our PNG sample (219 KB) with AI Deep Read under AI Deep Read on 2026-09-11. It took 3.7 s and produced a 497 B Plain text file, 100% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.

Input · sample.png · 219 KB

1240 × 1754 px, 8-bit, colour type 2

Width
1,240
Height
1,754
Encoding
8-bit, colour type 2

Output · sample.txt · 497 B

14 non-empty lines, 97 words

Lines
14
Words
97
  • AI Deep Read read 1 page; 1 credit per page

First lines of the output

txt
# Feedback Atlas — Q3 activity trail

Prepared for: Board of Directors · 12 Sep 2026

## Headline numbers

| Metric | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---:|---:|
| ARR | $4.1M | $4.9M |
| Net revenue retention | 108% | 113% |
| Support CSAT | 93% | 94% |
| Refunds | (12,400) | (9,850) |

## What went well

- Enterprise pipeline doubled after the SOC 2 report shipped.
- Support CSAT held at 94% while ticket volume rose 31%.
- Two renewals slipped into October. Owner: VP Sales.
…

Is your file a scan?

PNG has no selectable text layer, so treat every upload as OCR. Deep Read costs 1 credit for this one-image page, reads visible text from screenshots and scans, and should be reviewed when the PNG is low contrast, skewed, or contains handwriting.

Options and when to change them

languageHint
Set this when a PNG mixes English with another language or contains accents that automatic language detection may misread.
preserveLayout
Turn this on for forms or screenshots where line position matters more than flowing the text into paragraphs.

Do it yourself

Tesseract

bash
tesseract screenshot.png screenshot --psm 6

Tesseract read the sample, but it turned bullet dots into guillemets and kept more hard line breaks than Deep Read.

PNG to Plain text by API or MCP

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

curl
curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@input.png" -F "from=png" -F "to=txt" \
  -F "deepRead=true" \
  --output output.txt
API reference

When this is the wrong conversion

  • If the PNG contains a table you need as cells, use /convert/png-to-xlsx or /convert/png-to-csv instead of plain TXT.
  • If you need headings and tables in Markdown syntax, use /convert/png-to-md rather than stripping the image to text.
  • If the image is a photo format from a phone, /convert/jpg-to-txt may match the actual upload without a preliminary image conversion.

PNG to Plain text questions

Why did my TXT file contain a hash before the title?

Deep Read labeled the large screenshot title as a heading and emitted a Markdown-style hash. It is still plain text, so remove the marker if your downstream system expects no formatting hints.

Will PNG to TXT keep colored callouts?

No. The TXT output keeps text inside a callout but not the colored rectangle, border, or spacing. Use DOCX or Markdown if you need more structure around that text.

Does PNG OCR invent missing words?

The tested screenshot did not gain extra summary language. If a region is unreadable, the vision prompt tells the model to mark it as illegible rather than fill in a guess.

Related conversions