PNG, SVG or PDF — which export to choose
Published . By the DiagramDesk team.
What each export format is good at, when it will let you down, and which to use for slides, documents, printing and the web.
The editor exports PNG, SVG, PDF and its own file format. Picking the right one takes a moment and saves re-exporting later.
The short answer
| Where it is going | Use |
|---|---|
| A slide deck | PNG at 2× |
| A Word or Google document | PNG at 2× |
| A website | SVG |
| Printing, or sending to a client | |
| A poster or anything large | PNG at 4×, or SVG |
| Somewhere with a coloured background | PNG with no background |
| To keep and edit later | The DiagramDesk file |
PNG
An image made of pixels. It goes everywhere, looks the same everywhere, and needs nothing clever from whatever opens it.
Because it is pixels, it has one fixed size. Blow it up past that and it goes soft. This is why the editor exports at 2× unless you choose otherwise: the file is twice the size it appears on screen, so it still looks sharp on a high-resolution display or when somebody zooms into your slide. The export dialog shows the size in pixels before you save.
Use 4× for printing, or for a diagram that will be projected large. The file gets bigger but it stays crisp.
Set Background to None when the diagram is going onto a coloured slide or a dark background. Without it you get a white rectangle around your diagram. The preview shows a chequerboard wherever the image will be see-through.
SVG
Instructions for drawing the diagram rather than a picture of it. It stays perfectly sharp at any size, from a thumbnail to a billboard, and the file is usually small.
Best for websites, and good for handing to a designer, because the shapes and text stay editable in Illustrator, Inkscape, Figma and similar.
Two things to know. The text in an SVG is rendered with whatever font the viewing machine has, so it can shift very slightly between computers. And some older software — certain versions of Word in particular — handles SVG imperfectly. If a document looks wrong, fall back to PNG.
One page: the size of the diagram itself, or A4 or US Letter, portrait or landscape, with the diagram fitted to it. This is the format to send someone when the diagram is the document: a process to sign off, a chart to pin up, something going to a client.
The PDF is drawn in vectors, so it stays sharp at any zoom and prints crisply at any size, and its text can be selected and searched. It uses the PDF’s own built-in font, which covers English and the other Western European languages. If a label uses another script, such as Chinese, Arabic or Hindi, the PDF is saved as a high-resolution picture of the diagram instead, and the editor says so; Print, then “Save as PDF” in your browser’s print dialog, keeps that text as text.
The DiagramDesk file
The diagram itself, not a picture of it. This is the only export you can open again and keep editing.
Worth knowing: your diagrams live in your browser’s storage. That storage can be cleared by you, by your browser, by a cleanup tool, or simply by working in a private window. If that happens the work is gone, and because nothing is uploaded there is no copy anywhere to restore from.
Keep a copy outside the browser for anything you would be sorry to lose. A DiagramDesk file holds one diagram. Back up everything, in the editor’s File menu or on the start page, saves one file holding all of them, and Restore a backup reads it back, here or in another browser. Those files are the only backups that exist.
Copy image
Puts a PNG straight on your clipboard so you can paste it into a document, a chat or a slide without a file ever touching your disk. The quickest route when you are just showing somebody something.
Some browsers block a page from writing images to the clipboard. If nothing pastes, export a PNG instead.
Making exports look right
Fit the diagram first. Exports cover the whole drawing regardless of what is on screen, but fitting makes it easy to spot a stray shape parked off to one side that will otherwise be included and leave a large empty margin.
Mind the background. The export uses the canvas background colour. If you have set a dark canvas, that comes with it.
Check the text size. Text that is comfortable on a large monitor can be unreadable on a printed A4 page. A quick rule: nothing below 12pt in a diagram that will be printed.
Draw one now
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