PDF to JPG

Render the pages of a PDF as JPG images, at the resolution you choose, without the file leaving your machine.

Runs on your devicePDFWorkingNo account needed

What this tool does

PDF to JPG draws each page with pdf.js and encodes the result as a JPEG, so what comes back is a picture of the page rather than a copy of its contents. You get one image per page, named after the source document with the page number appended — report-p1.jpg, report-p3.jpg — and pages outside your selection are never drawn at all.

Resolution decides everything downstream. The dpi menu scales the page against its native 72-point grid: 150 dpi is a little over double and reads well on screen, 300 dpi is what a printer expects, and the 600 dpi option is capped at eight times scale, so it renders at 576 dpi rather than the number on the label. The quality slider then sets JPEG compression on top, from 20 to 100 per cent, defaulting to 88.

Rasterising is one-way, and that is the thing to know before converting anything important. Text that was selectable in the PDF becomes pixels in the JPG: the images cannot be searched, copied from or reflowed, and putting them back into a PDF does not bring the words back. JPEG is also lossy and has no alpha channel, so transparent areas are painted with the background colour — white unless you change it — and low quality settings leave visible fringing around sharp type.

The work runs in this browser tab, on your own processor, and the PDF is read from disk into memory rather than uploaded anywhere. That also sets the ceiling: a four-hundred-page report at 300 dpi takes real time and real memory, so progress is reported page by page and you can stop it partway.

How to use it

  1. Load the document. Add one PDF, or queue several. Each is rendered in turn and keeps its own name as the prefix for its images.
  2. Set resolution and pages. Choose 72, 150, 200, 300 or 600 dpi. Leave Pages on all, or narrow it — 1-5, 2,7,9, odd, even and last are all understood.
  3. Adjust quality and background. The slider trades file size against JPEG artefacts. Because JPEG cannot store transparency, anything transparent takes the background colour you pick.
  4. Save the images. Pages come back in ascending order, one JPG each, with the size of every file beside its name. Save them individually, or use Download all as ZIP when a run produced more than one.

Processing & privacy

Runs on your device. Your file is processed directly in this browser.

Common use cases

Dropping a page into a document

Word processors and slide software place a JPG without argument, where an embedded PDF often refuses or renders badly.

Posting a page where PDFs do not display

Forums, chat apps and listing pages show an image inline but hide a PDF behind a download link. A PDF to image conversion puts the page in front of people directly.

Making a cover thumbnail

Render page 1 at 72 dpi and you have a small preview image for a card, catalogue entry or index page.

Sending one page of a long document

Selecting a single page means the other forty never leave with it, which is often the point of exporting rather than forwarding.

Questions

Does the PDF leave my computer?
No. Pages are rendered in this browser tab by pdf.js, which this site serves itself rather than pulling from a third-party CDN. The renderer is fetched the first time you convert; the document never is, and nothing about it is transmitted, logged or stored.
Which resolution should I pick?
150 dpi suits reading on a screen and 300 dpi suits printing. 72 dpi is enough for thumbnails. Past 300 the file grows faster than the visible detail, and the 600 dpi option actually renders at 576 because the scale is capped at eight times the page size.
Can I get the text back out of the JPGs?
Not from the images themselves — rendering turns glyphs into pixels. Run PDF to Text on the original if you want the words, or PDF OCR if the PDF was already a scan.
Why did a big page fail at 600 dpi?
High dpi on a large page produces an enormous canvas, and browsers cap the canvas size they will encode. The tool reports that the browser could not encode the image; dropping to 200 or 300 dpi gets it through.
Can I convert a password-protected PDF?
Not while it is encrypted — the renderer refuses to open it and says so. Remove the password with Unlock PDF first, using a password you already have, then convert the result.
Should I choose JPG or PNG?
JPG is smaller and suits pages built from photographs or scans. PNG is lossless and keeps transparency, which matters for diagrams, screenshots and line art. PDF to PNG is the same renderer with a different encoder.

Related tools

  • Merge PDF — Combine several PDFs into one document in the order you choose.
  • Split PDF — Split one PDF into separate documents by page range.
  • Compress PDF — Reduce PDF file size while preserving the quality that matters.
  • JPG to PDF — Turn one or many JPG photos into a single PDF.
  • Protect PDF — Add a password and set permissions on a PDF.
  • Sign PDF — Draw, type or upload a signature and place it on the page.