I would like to request a very useful feature for Save As PDF / Export to PDF.
Feature request:
Add an option (checkbox) in the PDF export dialog:
“Rasterize pages as images” (or “Save as image-only PDF” / “Flatten to images”)
When this option is enabled:
All pages are converted to high-quality raster images inside the PDF.
Text cannot be selected or copied.
The document behaves like scanned/photographed pages (perfect for protection of sensitive content, invoices, contracts, brand books, presentations for clients, etc.).
Additionally, please add the ability to manually set DPI (resolution) for this rasterization, for example:
150 DPI — good balance for online viewing
300 DPI — excellent for printing and high-density screens
Custom value (up to 600 DPI)
Why this is important:
Many users (especially agencies and companies) need to distribute documents in a form where content cannot be easily copied. Currently, the only way to achieve this reliably is through third-party tools. For example, I currently use this command:
It would be much more convenient and professional to have this functionality built directly into OnlyOffice with a user-friendly interface and DPI control.
Use cases:
Protecting brand books and design templates
Sending invoices and financial documents
Distributing contracts and internal policies
Sharing presentations where the client should not copy text
This feature would make OnlyOffice even stronger as a complete Microsoft Office alternative, especially for professional and corporate users.
I’m ready to provide more details or test any beta versions of this feature.
Have you encountered a document processing app that provides such feature? As I can see, you have mentioned a stand-alone application that specifically dedicated to this task, thus I’d like to know if there was an editor that does that too.
Yes, absolutely. Several prominent document processors and professional editors have already integrated this directly or have identical built-in pipelines to solve this exact business problem:
Adobe Acrobat Pro: Has a direct, built-in feature “Save As → Image-Only PDF Document”. It does exactly what I proposed: rasterizes all layers and text into an un-selectable, image-only document in one click.
ABBYY FineReader PDF (and PDF Editor): Includes a direct option to “Save as image-only PDF” during the export process to protect documents from text extraction before sharing.
Microsoft Office / WPS Office (via Print Pipeline): In MS Word, users commonly achieve this inside the application without leaving it by using “Print → Microsoft Print to PDF” and checking the “Print to Image” option (which is exposed in the printer properties dialog inside the editor).
The issue with current workarounds: The Bash command I mentioned earlier is not a built-in OS trick — it requires installing and orchestration of standalone external utilities (specifically poppler-utils for pdftoppm and img2pdf).
Every time I need to send a secure invoice, contract, or brand book, I am forced to open the Linux terminal, run external packages, and manage temporary files manually.
Why it makes sense specifically for OnlyOffice: Since OnlyOffice runs on a modern, unified cross-platform engine (Web, Desktop, Mobile), having a native checkbox “Rasterize pages as images” directly in the “Export to PDF” dialog would be a massive competitive advantage. It completely removes the friction of switching to external tools for standard daily corporate tasks.
Does any of these options also provide a DPI setting?
This one is interesting, as I was not aware of such possibility. However, in my case, Word did not print DOCX (it cannot run PDF documents obviously) it as an image-based PDF, because I can select the text, whereas Desktop Editors on Windows allow printing both DOCX and PDF files with system printing dialog where the same “Microsoft Print to PDF” option is available and this one gave me an image-based PDF since I cannot select any text in it.
I have done it by opening Print Preview interface with Ctrl+P from a sample file and clicking “Print using the system dialog” option under Content section of this window. Seems to be working, can you check from your end too?