Render HTML to an image

Question

Is there a way to render html to image like PNG? I know that it is possible with canvas but I would like to render standard html element like div for example.

Answer 1

I know this is quite an old question which already has a lot of answers, yet I still spent hours trying to actually do what I wanted:

• given an html file, generate a (png) image with transparent background from the command line

Using Chrome headless (version 74.0.3729.157 as of this response), it is actually easy:

"/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --headless --screenshot --window-size=256,256 --default-background-color=0 button.html

Explanation of the command:

• you run Chrome from the command line (here shown for the Mac, but assuming similar on Windows or Linux)
• --headless runs Chrome without opening it and exits after the command completes
• --screenshot will capture a screenshot (note that it generates a file called screenshot.png in the folder where the command is run)
• --window-size allow to only capture a portion of the screen (format is --window-size=width,height)
• --default-background-color=0 is the magic trick that tells Chrome to use a transparent background, not the default white color
• finally you provide the html file (as a url either local or remote...)