How to use PDF to JPG
- 1Drop in a PDF — every page will be converted
- 2Choose a resolution: Screen, High or Print
- 3Watch each page render, with a preview as it completes
- 4Check the pixel dimensions shown under each page
- 5Download the pages you want
What PDF to JPG does
A PDF page is a set of drawing instructions, not a picture. Text is stored as characters plus a font, lines as vectors, and only photographs as actual pixels. That is why a PDF stays sharp at any zoom — the page is redrawn at whatever size you view it.
Turning that into a JPG means choosing a size and rendering the instructions once, at that size, into a fixed grid of pixels. The choice of resolution is therefore the whole decision: too low and text becomes unreadable, too high and you get enormous files for no visible gain. Everything else follows from it.
When to use it
- Posting a page where PDFs are not allowed
- Social platforms, forums and many chat apps display images inline but treat a PDF as an attachment nobody opens. A JPG of the page gets seen.
- Pulling a scanned photo back out
- When a PDF is a wrapper around a photograph — an estate agent's brochure, a scanned print — JPG is the natural format to get back, since the content was a photo to begin with.
- A thumbnail or preview
- Screen resolution produces a small file suitable for a listing image or a preview tile, where the page only needs to be recognisable rather than readable.
- Importing into software that will not read PDF
- Older photo editors, some presentation tools and many form uploads accept images only. Rendering the page first sidesteps the limitation.
PDF to JPG settings explained
- Screen (72 dpi)
- Renders at the page's nominal size — an A4 page becomes roughly 595 × 842 pixels. Small files, fine for previews and thumbnails, but body text will be difficult to read.
- High (144 dpi)
- Twice the linear resolution, so four times the pixels: about 1191 × 1684 for A4. This is the sensible default for anything that has to be read on screen.
- Print (216 dpi)
- Three times linear, nine times the pixels, around 1786 × 2526 for A4. Use it when the image will be printed or when small text must stay legible after zooming.
- JPEG quality
- Fixed at 92%, high enough that the compression artefacts JPEG produces around text edges stay faint. Lowering it would save little and damage exactly the content most PDFs are made of.
- Per-page output
- Every page becomes its own image, labelled with its page number and pixel dimensions so you can confirm the resolution before downloading.
What each resolution gives you
| Setting | A4 pixel size | Text legibility | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Screen (72 dpi) | 595 × 842 | Headings only | Thumbnails, previews |
| High (144 dpi) | 1191 × 1684 | Comfortable on screen | Reading, sharing |
| Print (216 dpi) | 1786 × 2526 | Sharp, survives zoom | Printing, small type |
Limits and what to expect
- The text stops being text — the output is pixels, so nothing is selectable or searchable afterwards.
- JPEG has no transparency; anything transparent in the PDF is composited onto white.
- Rendering happens page by page in the browser, so a long document takes a while at Print resolution.
- Every page is converted; there is no page selection in this tool.
- Documents requiring a password to open cannot be read; permission-restricted ones are fine.
Troubleshooting
- The text looks fuzzy or has coloured speckles around it
- That is JPEG ringing, and it is worst exactly where PDFs are strongest — sharp black-on-white edges. Render at a higher resolution so each character has more pixels, or use the PNG version of this tool, which is lossless and has no ringing at all.
- The images are enormous
- Print resolution produces nine times the pixels of Screen. If the pages are being read rather than printed, High is almost always enough. You can also compress the resulting JPGs afterwards.
- It is taking a long time
- Each page is rendered individually on your device, and cost scales with the square of the resolution. Print mode on a fifty-page document is genuinely slow — drop to High, or extract the pages you need first.
- The background turned white where it was transparent
- JPEG cannot store an alpha channel, so transparency is flattened. If the PDF has genuinely transparent regions you need to keep, convert to PNG instead.
Your files and your privacy
Pages are rendered by pdf.js running inside your browser tab and encoded to JPEG on your own device. The document is never uploaded and no page image is written to a server. Since converting a PDF to images is frequently a step in handling scanned identity or financial documents, that is the property that matters.
What to use next
FAQ
What resolution should I choose?
High (144 dpi) for anything that will be read on a screen — it makes an A4 page about 1191 × 1684 pixels, which is comfortable. Screen (72 dpi) only for thumbnails. Print (216 dpi) when the image will be printed or the type is small, accepting that files are nine times larger than Screen.
Why does the text look worse than in the PDF?
Two reasons compound. The page is no longer redrawn at your zoom level — it is a fixed grid of pixels — and JPEG compression produces faint ringing around hard edges, which is precisely what text is made of. Raising the resolution helps with both; converting to PNG eliminates the second entirely.
Can I convert only certain pages?
Not in this tool — it renders every page. Extract the pages you want into a smaller PDF first, then convert that. It is also considerably faster, since rendering is the expensive part.
Should I use JPG or PNG?
JPG for pages that are mostly photographs or scans, where its compression works well and the files stay small. PNG for pages of text, line art or diagrams, where lossless compression keeps edges perfectly clean and often produces a smaller file too.
Will the text still be searchable?
No. Converting to an image discards the text layer completely — the characters become pixels. Keep the original PDF if you need to search it, or run the images through OCR elsewhere to rebuild a text layer.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Rendering and encoding both happen inside your browser on your own device, and the tool works with the network disconnected.