PDF to JPEG Converter

What happens when you convert PDF to JPEG

• Each page of the PDF becomes its own JPEG file, rendered at 150 dpi by default. Choose 300 dpi for print-quality text.

How to convert PDF to JPEG online

1. Press "Choose PDF files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. You can add files of any size your device can hold in memory.
2. Adjust the settings if you need to. Lower quality gives a smaller file.
3. Press "Convert to JPEG". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each JPEG with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert PDF to JPEG?

PDF files usually come from documents, forms, invoices and print-ready files. People convert them to JPEG because JPEG opens everywhere and keeps photos small, which is why upload forms and email favour it.

In short, PDF is good at what it was made for, and JPEG is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. PDF opens in every browser's built-in viewer, while JPEG opens in every browser and image viewer.

How to convert PDF to JPEG on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

On Windows

Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your PDF files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each JPEG is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as JPEG with Save as, provided Windows can open the PDF in the first place.

On a Mac

Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the PDF files from Finder onto the drop zone and the JPEG files land in Downloads. Preview can do single images too: open the file, choose File, then Export, and pick JPEG.

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose PDF files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted JPEG appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image.

On Android

Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose PDF files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The JPEG is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for PDF to JPEG

JPEG is lossy, so the Quality setting trades file size against detail. Best is 95, High is 90, Medium is 80 and Small file is 65 on the usual 0 to 100 scale. At High the difference from the PDF is invisible for photos; at Small file you may see softness around text and fine patterns.

The Maximum width setting shrinks large images before encoding. A 4000 pixel phone photo reduced to 1920 pixels loses three quarters of its pixels and most of its size, yet still fills a laptop screen.

PDF vs JPEG: the differences

About PDF and JPEG files

What is a PDF file?

A PDF fixes the layout of every page so it looks the same on any device. Converting a PDF to an image renders each page to pixels; converting an image to PDF wraps it as a page.

What is a JPEG file?

JPEG and JPG are the same format. The three-letter extension dates from old Windows systems that only allowed three characters after the dot, and both names are still in use.

PDF to JPEG not working? Common problems

• Colours look slightly different. Browsers convert images to the standard sRGB colour space when they decode them, so wide-gamut and CMYK images can shift a little.
• A phone photo comes out upright even though it looked sideways elsewhere. That is correct: the rotation stored in the photo is applied during conversion, so the JPEG is always the right way up.
• The file is bigger than expected. A PDF is a short list of drawing instructions, while the JPEG stores every pixel, so the output is normally larger and grows with the width you choose.

Convert PDF to JPEG from the command line

If you work in a terminal, ImageMagick converts PDF to JPEG in one line:

magick input.pdf -quality 90 output.jpeg

To convert every PDF in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format jpeg *.pdf. ImageMagick needs Ghostscript installed to read PDF files. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.