How to Convert Canvas to an Image using JavaScript

The HTMLCanvasElement has special method toDataURL() which returns a encoded data URI representing the image in the specified format(defaults to PNG).

• If the canvas height or width is 0 or larger than the canvas maximum size, then the string containing "data:" is returned.
• If the requested type is not image/png, but the returned value starts with data:image/png, then the requested type is not supported.
• Chrome also supports the WEBP(image/webp) type.

Syntax

canvas.toDataURL(type, encoderOptions);

Parameters

type (optional)

• It indicates the type of image format.
• It will have the value of string type and is an optional parameter with default format type value image/png.

encoderOptions (optional)

• It indicates the type of image format.
• It will have the value of number type and is an optional parameter with default value 0.92.
• The value ranges from 0 to 1 indicating the quality of an image to use for formats that use lossy compression such as image/jpeg and image/webp.
• Invalid value is ignored and default value is considered instead of it.

Return value

It returns a DOMString containing the requested data URI.

Example 1

<canvas id="canvas" width="640" height="360"></canvas>

var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
var dataURL = canvas.toDataURL();
console.log(dataURL);

/*
"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAABa...5i/JyZmJr6v77XLtUjciSUnklJd29flKi1cAPKgw"
*/

Examples

<canvas id="canvas" width="640" height="360"></canvas>

function convertCanvasToImage() {
  let canvas = document.getElementById("canvas");
  let image = new Image();
  image.src = canvas.toDataURL();
  return image;
}

let pnGImage = convertCanvasToImage();
document.appendChild(pnGImage);

This code will append image element into your browser document.

Different image quality with jpegs format type

var highQuality = canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg", 1.0);
// "data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wBDAAEBAQ...DVLFP+UpPr5fYpqp1BAEAQBAEB//Z"
var mediumQuality = canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg", 0.5);
var lowQuality = canvas.toDataURL("image/jpeg", 0.1);

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