Convert Markdown to PNG Online

Paste a Markdown table below, edit it if you need to, and get PNG back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

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Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.
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Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.
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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What Markdown is

A Markdown table is rows of pipe-separated cells with a dashed rule under the header. Alignment is set by placing colons in that rule.

README files, GitHub issues, documentation sites, Obsidian and Notion.

What PNG is

A lossless image format. Text and thin lines stay exactly as drawn, which is what a table is made of.

Slides, chat messages, issue trackers, and anywhere a table has to travel as a picture rather than as data.

What changes when you convert Markdown to PNG

Leading and trailing pipes are optional and both are handled. A pipe the author escaped with a backslash is read as data rather than a column break, which is the usual reason a hand-written table parses one column too wide.

The table is drawn from the data onto a canvas rather than captured from the page, so the whole thing comes out however long it is and however much of it is on screen. Column widths are measured from the content, alternating rows are shaded, and the scale is adjustable so a table for a slide or a print layout can be drawn at two or three times the size.

What carries over from Markdown to PNG

Markdown records 2 things about a table that PNG has no way to hold.

Nothing in PNG records that the first row is a header. It is drawn at the top and looks like one, which is all that is left of the distinction.

PNG is the end of the line for this data. Reading the table back out of it is a separate and much harder problem than writing it, so keep the Markdown if you will need the values again.

Questions

How do I convert Markdown to PNG?

Paste your Markdown into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the PNG from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Can a Markdown table cell contain a line break?

Not directly. The row ends at the newline. Use a <br> tag inside the cell, which every common Markdown renderer passes through to the HTML output.

Can I get the data back out of a PNG of a table?

Not without optical character recognition, which is a different kind of software with a different failure rate. An image of a table is pixels. If anyone downstream might want to sort or sum the numbers, send the table as well as the picture.

Can I convert the PNG back to Markdown afterwards?

Not mechanically. PNG keeps how the table looks, not what it held, so going back means reading the values off the page again. Keep the Markdown if you will need it.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.

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