How to Convert PDF to JPG for Free

Before converting, a quick decision: JPG or PNG? JPG uses lossy compression — it discards data the eye is unlikely to notice — so files are smaller but text edges can show compression artifacts. PNG is lossless: pixel-perfect quality, larger files. The trade-off in practice:

• JPG works best for photo-heavy PDFs, social-media uploads, and situations where file size matters more than razor-sharp text.
• PNG is better for text documents, screenshots, diagrams, and anything with fine lines or transparency. See the PDF vs PNG guide for a deeper comparison.

If you decide PNG is the right format, the PDF-to-PNG guide covers the same methods with PNG-specific tips.

The PDF to JPG converter on this site runs entirely in your browser. Files never leave your device — the conversion happens in JavaScript using your own CPU.

1. Open the tool and drop your PDF onto the page, or click to browse.
2. Choose JPG as the output format and set the DPI. 150 DPI is fine for screens; 300 DPI is better if the images will be printed.
3. Click Convert. Each page becomes a separate JPG that downloads to your device.

No signup, no file-size limit, no watermark. A 20-page PDF converts in seconds on a modern laptop. Because nothing is uploaded, this also works offline once the page has loaded.

On a Mac, Preview can export individual pages as JPG without any extra software:

1. Open the PDF in Preview.
2. Go to File → Export.
3. In the Format dropdown select JPEG. Adjust the quality slider — 80-85% is a good balance of size and sharpness.
4. Choose a destination and click Save.

Preview exports the currently visible page. For a multi-page PDF, you need to navigate to each page and export individually. For bulk conversion, the browser tool or Ghostscript (below) is faster.

Ghostscript converts PDFs to images from the terminal. It is available on Linux, macOS (via Homebrew), and Windows:

gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=90 \
   -r300 -sOutputFile=page-%03d.jpg input.pdf

Key flags:

• -sDEVICE=jpeg — output format (use png16m for PNG instead).
• -dJPEGQ=90 — quality from 0-100. 85-95 gives good results.
• -r300 — resolution in DPI. Higher values mean sharper output and larger files.
• %03d — three-digit page number, so you get page-001.jpg, page-002.jpg, etc.

Install with brew install ghostscript on macOS or sudo apt install ghostscript on Debian/Ubuntu.

For automated pipelines — processing invoices, generating thumbnails, feeding pages into an ML model — a Python script gives you full control:

from pdf2image import convert_from_path

pages = convert_from_path("input.pdf", dpi=300, fmt="jpeg")
for i, page in enumerate(pages, start=1):
    page.save(f"page-{i:03d}.jpg", "JPEG", quality=90)

Install the library with pip install pdf2image. It requires Poppler under the hood (brew install poppler or sudo apt install poppler-utils). The library handles multi-page PDFs, custom DPI, and format selection in a few lines of code.

Two settings control how your JPG looks: DPI (how many pixels per inch) and quality (how much compression to apply).

• DPI determines image dimensions. A letter-size page at 150 DPI produces a 1275 × 1650 image. At 300 DPI it doubles to 2550 × 3300. Use 150 DPI for web and screen use, 300 DPI for print, and 72 DPI for thumbnails.
• Quality (1-100) controls JPEG compression. Below 70 you start seeing visible artifacts around text and edges. 85-95 is the sweet spot — sharp enough for most uses without inflating file size.
• For text-heavy documents, consider PNG instead. JPEG compression smudges crisp text edges. The PDF to PNG converter produces lossless output that keeps text perfectly sharp.

Need to convert dozens of PDFs at once? The browser tool handles multi-page PDFs automatically — every page becomes its own JPG. For multiple separate PDF files, Ghostscript and the Python script both work well inside a shell loop:

for f in *.pdf; do
  gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=jpeg -dJPEGQ=90 \
     -r300 -sOutputFile="${f%.pdf}-%03d.jpg" "$f"
done

This converts every PDF in the current directory, naming the output files after the source document. On a standard laptop, expect roughly 1-2 seconds per page at 300 DPI.

Once you have your images, common next steps include:

• Rebuild as a new PDF. After editing or annotating the images, convert them back with the JPG to PDF or Image to PDF tool.
• Compress the source PDF. If the goal was to shrink a large PDF for email, the Compress PDF tool may be a simpler path than converting to images.
• Merge pages from different sources. Combine converted images or PDFs using the Merge PDF tool.