Converting a PDF to JPG renders each page as a separate image file. It's useful when you need to embed a PDF page in a presentation, share a document as images rather than a PDF, or use content in a system that only accepts image formats.
JPG vs PNG: Which to Use
Before converting, it's worth considering whether JPG is actually the right format for your use case. JPG uses lossy compression that introduces visible artifacts around text and high-contrast edges โ exactly what most PDF pages contain. PNG is lossless and produces noticeably sharper text. If file size isn't a pressing concern, PNG gives better results for document pages. JPG makes more sense for PDF pages that are primarily photographic content, or when you specifically need the smaller file size that JPG compression provides.
Browser-Based Conversion
WukongPDF's PDF to Image tool converts PDF pages to JPG directly in the browser. Upload the PDF, select JPG as the output format, and download. Multi-page PDFs produce one JPG per page, typically packaged as a ZIP file. Most browser tools let you set the output quality โ a higher quality setting produces sharper images with larger file sizes; lower quality produces smaller files with more visible compression artifacts.
For documents that will be displayed on screen rather than printed, a quality setting of 80-85% is a good balance โ visually indistinguishable from 100% at normal viewing size but meaningfully smaller in file size. For images that will be printed or displayed at high zoom, use higher quality settings.
On Mac: Export From Preview
Open the PDF in Preview, go to File โ Export, and change the Format dropdown to JPEG. Set the quality slider โ higher values toward the right produce better quality โ and save. Preview exports the currently visible page, so for a multi-page document you'll need to navigate to each page and export separately, which is manageable for a few pages but tedious for longer documents.
Resolution and Output Quality
Resolution controls how many pixels the output image contains. At 96 DPI the image matches screen display and is fine for digital sharing. At 150 DPI it's better for presentations and most print-adjacent uses. At 300 DPI you get print-quality output but substantially larger files โ a 300 DPI JPG of a letter-size page at high quality can be several megabytes.
The resolution setting only matters for the output image quality โ it doesn't affect whether text in the original PDF is sharp or not. A PDF with crisp vector text at 96 DPI will look sharp on screen. The same page at 300 DPI will look sharp when printed. The PDF content itself doesn't change; only how many pixels are used to represent it in the image output.