Convert a PDF to JPG in four steps
- Open PDF to JPG in your browser and choose the PDF, or drop it on the page.
- Pick the pages you want. All pages are selected by default. Tick pages in the thumbnail grid or type a range like
1-3, 5, 8-. - Choose the resolution and the JPG quality. The defaults (150 dpi, quality 90) suit most screens and chat apps.
- Convert, then download. One page comes as a picture, several pages come as a list with a button for each and a Download all as ZIP.
The pages are drawn and saved on your device, so the PDF is never uploaded. That matters when the PDF is a contract, a bank statement or a scan of your ID. There is no sign up and no watermark. To confirm the no upload claim for any tool, follow is it safe to upload a PDF to a free website.
JPG or PNG: which one to choose
A PDF page is a mix of text, lines and pictures, and the two formats treat that differently.
- JPG is best for pages with photos and scans, and any case where a small file matters: chat apps, email, and forms that only accept JPG. It is lossy, so very fine text can show faint marks around the letters at low quality.
- PNG is best for sharp text, lines, diagrams, logos and slides, or anything you will edit or place in another file. It is lossless, so edges stay clean, but files are bigger. PDF to PNG can also give a transparent background, where parts of the page the PDF never painted become clear.
A reasonable rule: if you are converting a scanned or photo heavy PDF for sending, use JPG. If you are converting a slide or a document with small text that someone will zoom into, use PNG. And if you want to keep the pages as a PDF but need them smaller, skip conversion and use Reduce PDF size. The JPG vs PNG vs WebP vs AVIF guide compares the formats in general.
Resolution: the setting that decides sharpness
A PDF has no fixed pixel size, so you choose one when you turn a page into a picture. The setting is dots per inch (dpi): how many pixels are drawn for each inch of the page.
- 72 or 96 dpi: small pictures for web pages and quick previews. Text can look soft.
- 150 dpi (the default): sharp on most screens and phones, and fine for sending in a chat or email.
- 200 dpi: a good middle ground when someone will zoom in.
- 300 dpi: for printing or when small text must stay crisp. It makes four times the pixels of 150 dpi, so the files are much bigger.
You can also enter your own value from 20 to 1200. The pixel size of the first chosen page is shown before you convert, so you can see what you will get. An A4 page at 150 dpi comes out at about 1240 by 1754 pixels.
Very large pages have a ceiling: a page is drawn at up to about 67 megapixels on a computer and 16.7 on a phone or tablet. If a page is bigger, it is drawn at a lower resolution and you are told which page and by how much.
JPG quality and file size
JPG quality is a slider from 1 to 100, starting at 90. Lower numbers make smaller files with more visible marks near text. For a page of text, stay above about 80. For a photo page, 70 to 80 is often indistinguishable on a screen and noticeably smaller.
If your JPGs are too heavy to send, lower the quality a little before you lower the resolution. If the text becomes fuzzy, go the other way: raise the resolution, or switch to PNG for that document. Remember the background is always white in JPG, because the format cannot be see-through.
On a Mac
Preview can export a PDF page as a JPG: open the file, select the page in the sidebar, choose File, then Export, and set the format to JPEG. It handles one page at a time, so a long document means repeating the steps. For a whole document, the browser tool is faster: open it in Safari or Chrome, leave all pages selected and download the ZIP. It also gives you the dpi and quality choices that Preview hides.
On Windows
Windows has no built-in PDF to JPG converter, and the old trick of taking a screenshot of the page limits you to your screen's resolution and cuts off long pages. In Edge, Chrome or Firefox, open the converter, choose the file, pick the pages and download. A file with 40 pages is one click, not forty screenshots.
On iPhone and Android
The same page works in Safari or Chrome on a phone. Tap to choose the PDF from your Files app or cloud drive, pick the pages and convert. Single pictures can be saved to your photo library from the share menu or the downloads list. Phones draw pages at a lower ceiling (about 16.7 megapixels), which is more than enough for screen use, but a huge poster page may come out at a lower resolution than you asked for.
Scans, text and what a picture cannot do
A converted page is a picture. The text is no longer text: you cannot select, copy or search it, and links stop working. ClipLime does not read text from pictures, so it cannot turn a scanned PDF into editable words. That is a different job from the one this page does. If the PDF has real text and you want the words, see how to copy text from a PDF.
A scanned PDF already holds one picture per page, so converting it to JPG mostly gets you back something close to the original scan. If you want just one page of a PDF as its own PDF rather than a picture, Split PDF into pages makes one file per page, and the guide to splitting a PDF into pages goes into it.
PDFs protected with a password or permission settings cannot be opened by the tool.
File names and ZIP
Multi page conversions are named after your file and the real page number, like report-page-001.jpg, so they sort correctly in a folder and you can tell which page is which. The ZIP contains the same files, which is the easiest way to move a whole document into an email or a chat. To go the other way and put pictures into a PDF, see how to save a picture as a PDF.