Convert PDF to JPG
Drop in a document, pick the pages, and get a JPG of each one, ready to post or put in a slide. The rendering happens in this tab, so the file is never uploaded.
The pages appear here once a PDF is open.
How to use it#
- Drop a PDF into the box above.
- Choose the pages you want, such as 1-3, 7. The first twenty are picked for you.
- Pick a resolution: 72, 150, or 300 dpi. The pages are drawn again whenever either setting changes.
- Download the images one at a time, or all of them as a zip.
What you give up by making it an image#
Text in a PDF is usually real text with a font attached, which is why it stays crisp at any zoom and can be selected, searched, and copied. A JPG of that page is a grid of pixels that happens to look like words. Nothing can search it, and zooming in shows you bigger pixels rather than more detail.
That is a reasonable trade when the destination cannot take a PDF: a slide, a web page, a chat message, a marketplace listing, a form that only accepts images. It is a poor trade for anything that will be read carefully or archived.
Choosing the resolution#
A PDF page has no resolution of its own. It is described in points, 72 to the inch, and the resolution only exists once something draws it. The setting here decides how many pixels go into each inch of the page.
72 dpi draws one pixel per point, which suits a thumbnail or a preview and makes small text mushy. 150 dpi is the right default for reading on screen and for slides. 300 dpi is what a print shop, a scanner, or a form that asks for print quality means, and it makes each image about four times the pixels of 150.
An A4 page at 300 dpi is 2480 by 3508 pixels, so a forty page document at that setting is a lot of image. Start with 150 and go up only for the pages that need it. A page larger than A4, such as A3 or a poster, can be more pixels at 300 dpi than some browsers will put in one picture, about 16 million. It is then drawn at the highest resolution that fits, and its row says what that was.
Why the first page takes a moment#
Rendering a PDF properly means interpreting it: the page description, the embedded fonts, the vector paths, the colour spaces. The engine that does this is large, and it is fetched the first time you drop a document in rather than sitting on every page of this site.
It also runs on a background thread, so a long document does not lock the tab while it draws. The pages are drawn one after another, which is why a large selection takes proportionally longer rather than arriving all at once.
JPG, and when you would want otherwise#
JPG, also written JPEG, suits pages that are mostly photographs and is the format people ask for by name. It is the wrong choice for a page of text and line art, where its compression leaves grey fuzz around the letters. The PDF to PNG tool draws the same pages losslessly, which keeps the letters clean at the cost of a larger file.
Every page is drawn onto white first, because a PDF page has no background of its own and an unpainted area would come out black in a JPEG.
Frequently asked questions#
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
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No. The pages are drawn in this tab by your own browser. Nothing is sent to a server, so a document under an NDA stays on your machine.
Which resolution should I choose?
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150 dpi is right for most things and is the default. 72 dpi is for thumbnails and previews. 300 dpi is for an image that will be printed, zoomed into, or sent to a form that asks for print quality, and produces files several times larger.
Will the text still be searchable?
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No. An image is pixels, so the words in it cannot be selected, searched, or copied by anything. If that matters, keep the PDF. This is a one way conversion.
Why does the first conversion take longer?
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The rendering engine is fetched the first time you drop a document in, rather than being loaded on every page of this site. After that it stays in memory, and further pages are quicker.
Can I convert every page at once?
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Yes, though a long document at 300 dpi makes a lot of large images. Type 1- to run from the first page to the last, and press Download all as .zip to get them in one file.
Can I save just one page of a PDF as a JPG?
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Yes. Type that page number alone in the pages box, such as 4, and the button becomes Download JPG for that one image.
Does it work on a password protected or copy protected PDF?
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Once the open password is off, yes: remove it with the PDF password remover, then bring the unlocked copy back here. A file that opens freely but whose author forbade copying is refused, because turning its pages into pictures takes its content out, which is what the author ruled out. The file's owner password lifts that lock in the same remover, or the author can send a copy without it.
Does it work on a phone?
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Yes. It runs in the phone’s browser like any other page, with no app to install. Phones have less memory than laptops, so for a long document pick fewer pages at a time, or 150 dpi rather than 300.
Why are my pages white where the PDF looked transparent?
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A PDF page has no background of its own, and JPG cannot store transparency. Each page is drawn onto white first, because the alternative in a JPEG is black.