How to convert a PDF to JPG
- Choose or drop the PDF. Conversion starts at once, and the counter shows which page is being drawn.
- Pick JPG or PNG. JPG gives much smaller files and suits scans and photos. PNG is lossless: every pixel stays exactly as drawn, which keeps fine print and line drawings crisp, at several times the file size.
- Choose the resolution. 150 DPI is right for reading on a screen, email and most uploads; 300 DPI for printing or zooming into small print; 72 DPI for quick previews.
- Pick pages if you don't need them all. Leave the box empty for every page, or type pages and ranges the way a print dialog takes them:
1-3, 5, or8-for page 8 to the end. - Download each image on its own, or all of them at once with the ZIP file at the top of the list.
Which resolution to choose
PDF pages have a physical size — US Letter is 8.5 × 11 inches, A4 is 210 × 297 mm — while an image is a grid of pixels. DPI (dots per inch) decides how many pixels each inch of the page gets: the width in pixels is the page width in inches times the DPI. PDF itself measures pages in points, 72 to the inch, which is why 72 DPI gives one pixel per point.
| Resolution | US Letter page | A4 page | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72 DPI | 612 × 792 px | 595 × 842 px | Previews, thumbnails, chat messages |
| 150 DPI | 1,275 × 1,650 px | 1,240 × 1,754 px | Reading on screen, email, slides, most upload forms |
| 300 DPI | 2,550 × 3,300 px | 2,480 × 3,508 px | Printing, small print, text recognition (OCR) |
Doubling the DPI doubles the width and the height, so the image has four times as many pixels and the file grows accordingly. Pick the lowest resolution that does the job — 300 DPI images of a long document can add up to many megabytes.
How the conversion works
The pages are drawn by pdf.js, Mozilla's open-source PDF engine — the one Firefox uses to show PDFs — running inside this page. Each page is drawn onto an off-screen canvas at the chosen resolution: text with its fonts, vector graphics, embedded photos, and scanned images in the formats scanners use (including JBIG2 and JPEG 2000). Your browser then saves the canvas as a JPG or PNG. Filled-in form fields and stamps are usually drawn just as your PDF reader shows them, and the page background is white, as on paper.
Pages are converted one at a time, and each canvas is emptied as soon as its image is saved, so long documents work even on a phone. If you change a setting while a long PDF is being converted, the old run stops at the next page and a new one begins.
Worked example
You need pages 1 and 3 of a three-page bank statement, statement.pdf, as images for an online form. Leave JPG at 90% and 150 DPI, and type 1, 3 in the pages box. You get statement-page-1.jpg and statement-page-3.jpg, each 1,275 × 1,650 pixels — 8.5 inches × 150 and 11 inches × 150 — plus statement-images.zip holding both. The list shows each file's size. If the form rejects them as too large, convert again at 72 DPI, or shrink them to an exact limit with Reduce Image Size in KB.
Very large pages
Safari on iPhone and iPad can't draw an image larger than about 16.7 million pixels, and other browsers have their own ceilings. Pages that would exceed 16 million pixels at the chosen DPI — posters, large drawings, or an A3 page at 300 DPI — are drawn at the highest resolution that fits instead, and the result lists those pages under "Lower resolution". Standard Letter and A4 pages stay well inside the limit even at 300 DPI.
Private: your PDF never leaves your device
The PDFs people convert to images are often the sensitive ones: statements, pay slips, contracts, certificates, ID scans for an application. Most online converters upload them to a server first. Here the PDF engine is downloaded to your browser and does all the work on your own computer or phone — the file isn't sent anywhere, and the page keeps working if your connection drops after it has loaded.
Limits and tips
- Password-protected PDFs that ask for a password to open can't be converted here. Open the file in your PDF reader with the password, print it to a new PDF ("Save as PDF" or "Microsoft Print to PDF") and convert that copy.
- Text becomes a picture. You can't select or search the text in a JPG or PNG; keep the PDF for that.
- Fonts that aren't embedded in the PDF are replaced with similar fonts from your device, so such text can look slightly different than in Adobe Acrobat. This includes older Chinese, Japanese and Korean PDFs.
- Large files are held in memory while they are converted; for a long document on a phone, convert a range of pages at a time.
Going the other way — photos or scans into one PDF — is what JPG to PDF does. To keep pages as a PDF instead of images, use Split PDF, and to make the images smaller afterwards, the image compressor.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert a PDF to JPG?
Choose or drop the PDF, keep JPG as the format and download the images — one per page, or all of them in a single ZIP file. No sign-up and no watermark.
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
No. The PDF is opened and drawn by your browser on your own device; only the page and the PDF engine are downloaded from this site.
How do I convert just one page of a PDF?
Type its number in the Pages box, for example 4, and you get a single image of page 4. Ranges such as 2-5 work too.
Should I choose JPG or PNG?
JPG for scans, photos and anything you send or upload, because the files are much smaller. PNG for pages of fine text, charts and drawings when the size doesn’t matter, because it never blurs edges.
What DPI should I use?
150 DPI for reading on a screen and for most uploads, 300 DPI for printing or when small print must stay legible, and 72 DPI for small previews.
Can I convert PDF to PNG with a transparent background?
No. Pages are drawn on a white background, as on paper, so PNG images have no transparency.
Can I convert a password-protected PDF?
Not directly. Open it in your PDF reader with the password, print it to a new PDF and convert that copy.
Last updated: October 15, 2026