How to Save a PDF as a JPG (Convert PDF to JPG on Any Device)

Updated June 12, 2026.

The fastest way to save a PDF as a JPG depends on your device: on a Mac, open the PDF in Preview and choose File → Export → JPEG. On Windows, use a free tool like PDF24 or Adobe's free online converter, because Windows has no built-in PDF-to-JPG export. On iPhone and iPad, a two-action Shortcut converts every page to an image in seconds. And if you're comfortable with a terminal, pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 input.pdf page converts every page of any PDF in one line.

This guide covers all of those methods step by step, plus the two settings that decide whether your JPG comes out sharp or blurry: resolution (DPI) and JPG quality. Skip to the section for your device, or jump down to the DPI section first if a previous conversion came out fuzzy — that's the most common problem, and it has a one-setting fix.

Which method should you use?

Your situation	Best method	Cost
One page, on a Mac	Preview → File → Export → JPEG	Free, built in
One diagram or region of a page (Mac)	Preview → select area → New from Clipboard → Export	Free, built in
Any PDF, on Windows	PDF24 Creator (offline) or Adobe online tool	Free
On iPhone / iPad	Shortcuts app ("Make Image From PDF Page")	Free, built in
On Android	Browser-based converter (iLovePDF, Adobe online)	Free
Many pages or many PDFs at once	pdftoppm command line, or Adobe Acrobat	Free / paid
Sensitive document (transcript, ID, contract)	Any offline method — Preview, PDF24, command line	Free
Need exact DPI and quality control	Command line, CloudConvert, or Acrobat	Free / paid

How to convert PDF to JPG on a Mac (Preview, two methods)

macOS handles this natively — no downloads, no uploads.

Method 1: Export a page with Preview

1. Open the PDF in Preview (double-click it; Preview is the default PDF app on macOS).
2. If the PDF has multiple pages, open the thumbnail sidebar (View → Thumbnails) and click the page you want — Preview exports the currently selected page, not the whole document.
3. Choose File → Export…
4. In the Format dropdown, choose JPEG. (Tip: holding the Option key while clicking the dropdown reveals extra formats.)
5. Set the Quality slider — about 80–90% is the sweet spot for sharp text without a huge file.
6. Set the Resolution field. The default is often 150 pixels/inch; raise it to 300 if you'll zoom in or print.
7. Click Save.

The one limitation: Preview exports one page at a time. For a 40-page PDF, use the Shortcuts batch method or the command-line one-liners covered later in this guide instead of exporting 40 times.

Method 2: Export just a region (one diagram, one table)

If you only need a figure or a chunk of a page — common when you're pulling a diagram out of lecture slides — don't export the whole page and crop later:

1. Open the PDF in Preview and go to the page with the content you want.
2. Choose Tools → Rectangular Selection (or just click and drag if the selection tool is already active).
3. Drag a box around the diagram or region.
4. Press ⌘C to copy, then File → New from Clipboard (⌘N). The selection opens as a new image document.
5. Choose File → Export…, pick JPEG (or PNG — better for diagrams with sharp lines and text), and save.

One caveat: this captures the region at the PDF's current rendering size, so zoom in (⌘+) before selecting if you need a higher-resolution crop.

How to convert PDF to JPG on Windows

Windows 10 and 11 have no built-in PDF-to-JPG export. Microsoft Edge opens PDFs but can only print or save them as PDFs again. You have one built-in workaround and several good free tools.

Built-in workaround: Snipping Tool

1. Open the PDF in Edge (or any PDF viewer) and zoom so the page fills the screen.
2. Press Win + Shift + S and drag across the page.
3. Click the notification, then save the capture (Ctrl + S).

This is fine for pasting a page into a chat or a slide, but the resolution is capped at your screen — roughly 96 DPI worth of detail. Text will look soft if you zoom or print. For anything that needs to stay sharp, use a real converter:

Free Windows tools that convert properly

• PDF24 Creator (free, works offline): install it, open the PDF to Image tool, drop in your PDF, choose JPEG, set the DPI (use 150–300), and convert. It handles every page automatically and never uploads your file — good for transcripts and anything sensitive.
• IrfanView (free, with the Ghostscript plugin): open the PDF, File → Save As → JPG. Its File → Batch Conversion can convert a whole folder of PDFs in one run.
• GIMP (free): File → Open the PDF, set the import resolution (300 DPI for sharp output) when prompted, then File → Export As and type a .jpg filename. Imports one page at a time unless you open pages as layers.
• LibreOffice Draw (free): opens PDFs page by page; File → Export As → JPEG. Useful if you already have LibreOffice installed, clunky otherwise.

If you don't want to install anything, skip ahead to the browser tools section below.

How to convert PDF to JPG on iPhone and iPad

The built-in Shortcuts app does this better than any App Store converter, with no ads and no upload:

1. Open Shortcuts and tap + to create a new shortcut.
2. Tap Add Action, search for "Make Image From PDF Page", and add it.
3. Add a second action: "Save to Photo Album". (Optional: insert a "Convert Image" action between them and set it to JPEG with a quality of 0.8–0.9 — otherwise pages may save as PNGs, which are larger but also fine for most uses.)
4. Tap the shortcut's settings (the info icon), enable Show in Share Sheet, and name it something like "PDF to Images".
5. Now in the Files app (or Mail, Safari, anywhere), open or long-press the PDF, tap Share, and pick your shortcut. Every page lands in your Photos library as a separate image.

For a quick one-off — one page, quality doesn't matter — just open the PDF and take a screenshot, then crop. Same caveat as Windows snipping: screen resolution only.

How to convert PDF to JPG on Android

Android has no system-level converter, and most "PDF to JPG" apps on the Play Store are ad-heavy wrappers around the same web services you can use directly. The cleaner paths:

1. Use a browser tool (recommended): open Chrome, go to iLovePDF's or Adobe's free PDF-to-JPG page, upload, convert, download. Works on any Android device with nothing to install. See the next section for which tool to pick.
2. Screenshot for quick one-offs: open the PDF in Google Drive or your viewer, screenshot, crop. Screen resolution only.
3. If you convert PDFs regularly and want offline conversion, look for an app that explicitly says it converts on-device — most don't, which matters if the document is private.

Converting PDF to JPG in the browser (no install)

Online tools work on every platform and handle multi-page PDFs automatically — they typically return a ZIP with one JPG per page.

• Adobe Acrobat online (acrobat.adobe.com → "PDF to JPG"): free, accurate rendering (it's Adobe's own engine), lets you pick JPG/PNG/TIFF. You'll need a free Adobe account to download results.
• iLovePDF: free tier covers normal use. Offers two distinct modes worth understanding: "Page to JPG" (renders each page as an image — what you usually want) and "Extract images" (pulls out the original embedded photos at their native resolution — better if you only want the photos inside the PDF).
• CloudConvert: the most control of any browser tool — set exact DPI, quality, and page ranges before converting. Free for a limited number of conversions per day.
• PDF24 online tools: free with no account, same engine as the Windows app.

Privacy rule of thumb: anything you upload to a converter sits on someone else's server, at least temporarily. For transcripts, IDs, contracts, or anything with personal data, use an offline method instead — Preview on Mac, PDF24 Creator on Windows, Shortcuts on iOS, or the command line. They're just as fast and the file never leaves your machine.

Converting with Adobe Acrobat (paid desktop)

If you already have Acrobat Pro, it's the most polished option for multi-page exports:

1. Open the PDF and choose File → Export To → Image → JPEG. (Or Tools → Export PDF → Image.)
2. Click the gear/settings icon next to JPEG to set quality and color space, and the resolution (set 150–300 DPI depending on use).
3. Pick a folder and click Save. Acrobat exports every page automatically, named like document_Page_1.jpg, document_Page_2.jpg, and so on.

Acrobat also has a Take a Snapshot tool (under Edit) that copies a selected region to the clipboard at screen resolution — handy for quick paste-into-an-email moments, like Preview's region method on Mac.

Command line one-liners (sips, ImageMagick, pdftoppm)

For repeatable, scriptable conversion — or when you have 200 pages and zero patience — the terminal beats every GUI.

pdftoppm (the best tool for this job)

pdftoppm ships with Poppler, the same renderer many Linux PDF viewers use. It converts every page, fast, with exact control:

# Every page → page-1.jpg, page-2.jpg, ... at 300 DPI
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 input.pdf page

# Higher JPEG quality (default is 75)
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 -jpegopt quality=90 input.pdf page

# Only pages 3 through 5
pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 -f 3 -l 5 input.pdf page

Install: brew install poppler (Mac), sudo apt install poppler-utils (Debian/Ubuntu — often preinstalled). On Windows, use it inside WSL or grab a Poppler build.

ImageMagick

# All pages → output-0.jpg, output-1.jpg, ...
magick -density 300 input.pdf -quality 90 output.jpg

# All pages stitched vertically into ONE tall JPG
magick -density 150 input.pdf -append combined.jpg

(Older installs use convert instead of magick.) Two gotchas: ImageMagick delegates PDF rendering to Ghostscript, so Ghostscript must be installed; and on some Linux distros you'll hit attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy 'PDF' — a deliberate default in /etc/ImageMagick-*/policy.xml that you (or your admin) must relax to allow reading PDFs. If you don't want to touch policy files, use pdftoppm instead.

Note the -density flag must come before the input file — it tells ImageMagick what resolution to rasterize at. Putting it after produces a 72 DPI render no matter what.

sips (preinstalled on every Mac)

sips -s format jpeg input.pdf --out output.jpg

Zero install, but one big limitation: sips only converts the first page of a PDF. Perfect for single-page PDFs (receipts, certificates, one-page handouts); useless for documents.

Ghostscript directly

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

Produces page-001.jpg, page-002.jpg, … Useful when Ghostscript is already on the system and Poppler isn't.

Batch converting many pages or many PDFs

• Many pages, one PDF: pdftoppm, ImageMagick, Ghostscript, Acrobat, and every online tool above handle all pages automatically. Preview and sips don't.
• Many PDFs at once (shell loop):

for f in *.pdf; do pdftoppm -jpeg -r 200 "$f" "${f%.pdf}"; done

This converts every PDF in the folder, naming outputs after each source file.

• Mac, no terminal: build a two-action shortcut in the Shortcuts app (same actions as the iPhone method: Make Image From PDF Page → Save File), save it as a Quick Action, and it appears in Finder's right-click menu for any PDF.
• Windows, no terminal: PDF24 Creator and IrfanView's Batch Conversion both accept multiple files in one run.

What DPI should you use? 72 vs 150 vs 300

DPI (dots per inch) decides how many pixels each page becomes — and it's the single setting behind almost every "why is my JPG blurry?" complaint. A US Letter page (8.5 × 11 in) renders to:

DPI	Pixel dimensions	Typical file size (text page, q85)	Good for
72	612 × 792	~50–100 KB	Thumbnails only — text is fuzzy on any modern screen
150	1275 × 1650	~150–400 KB	Sharing, slides, viewing on screen — the default sweet spot
300	2550 × 3300	~500 KB–2 MB	Printing, zooming in, OCR, archiving
600	5100 × 6600	2–8 MB+	Almost never worth it — quadruple the pixels of 300 for detail PDFs rarely contain

Many tools default to 72 or 96 DPI — a holdover from old screen standards — which is exactly why a converted page looks sharp in the PDF but soft as a JPG. If output looks blurry, the fix is almost always re-converting at 150–300 DPI, not increasing JPG quality.

JPG quality is the second dial: it controls compression, not pixel count. Quality 80–90 is visually clean for documents; below ~70, text grows smudgy halo artifacts; above ~92, file size climbs steeply for invisible gains.

JPG vs PNG vs WebP: which format should you pick?

Format	Compression	Best for	Watch out for
JPG	Lossy	Scanned pages, photos, mixed content; universal compatibility	Visible artifacts around sharp text at lower quality
PNG	Lossless	Text-heavy pages, diagrams, line art, screenshots; supports transparency	2–5× larger files for photo-like content
WebP	Lossy or lossless	Web use — roughly 25–35% smaller than JPG at similar quality	Some older apps, upload forms, and printers still reject it

Practical rule: JPG for scans and photos, PNG for crisp text and diagrams, WebP when the destination is a website you control. If a form or app demands "JPG/JPEG only," that's the same format — JPG and JPEG are identical; the three-letter version just dates back to old Windows filename limits.

Multi-page PDFs: one JPG per page, or one big image?

A JPG can only hold a single image, so a 10-page PDF necessarily becomes 10 separate JPGs — every multi-page-capable tool (Acrobat, pdftoppm, online converters, Shortcuts) names them sequentially for you.

If you genuinely need everything in one image file — say, a form that accepts a single image upload — stitch the pages vertically:

magick -density 150 input.pdf -append combined.jpg

Keep stitched images to a handful of pages; a 30-page vertical strip produces an enormous, unwieldy file and some apps refuse images beyond certain pixel dimensions.

Common problems and fixes

Blurry or fuzzy output. The tool rendered at 72–96 DPI. Re-convert at 150–300 DPI (Preview's Resolution field, PDF24's DPI option, -r 300 for pdftoppm, -density 300 for ImageMagick). Raising JPG quality won't fix this — quality controls compression, not sharpness.

Text has smudgy halos or ringing. Classic JPG compression artifacts — JPG was designed for photos, and hard black-on-white edges are its worst case. Raise quality to 90+, or switch to PNG for text-heavy pages.

Files are huge. Drop from 300 to 150 DPI (that alone cuts pixel count 4×), lower quality from 95 to 80–85, or use WebP if the destination supports it. A typical lecture-slide page at 150 DPI / quality 85 should land around 150–400 KB.

ImageMagick says "operation not allowed by the security policy 'PDF'". A default restriction in /etc/ImageMagick-*/policy.xml on some Linux distros. Either edit the PDF policy line to rights="read|write", or sidestep it entirely with pdftoppm.

Password-protected PDF won't convert. Tools either prompt for the password or silently fail. Open the PDF in a viewer with the password, print/save it as an unprotected PDF, then convert. (Only do this for documents you're authorized to open.)

Colors look washed out or wrong. The PDF was built for print using CMYK colors. Add -colorspace sRGB to an ImageMagick command, or use Acrobat/Adobe online, which handle color conversion correctly.

Characters missing or fonts look wrong. The converter's rendering engine couldn't handle an embedded font. Try a different renderer — Poppler (pdftoppm) and Adobe's own tools have the best font coverage. Once converted, fonts are baked into pixels, so the JPG will look identical everywhere.

FAQ: saving PDFs as JPGs

What's the fastest free way to save a PDF as a JPG?

On a Mac: open it in Preview, File → Export → JPEG — about ten seconds. On Windows: PDF24 Creator (offline) or Adobe's free online converter. On iPhone/iPad: a two-action Shortcut. On Android: iLovePDF or Adobe's tool in the browser. None of these cost anything.

Can I convert a PDF to JPG without uploading it anywhere?

Yes. Preview (Mac), PDF24 Creator and IrfanView (Windows), the Shortcuts app (iPhone/iPad/Mac), and command-line tools like pdftoppm all convert entirely on your device. Use one of these for transcripts, IDs, contracts, or anything else you wouldn't email to a stranger.

Why is my converted JPG blurry?

The converter rendered the page at 72–96 DPI, which is too few pixels for modern screens. Re-convert at 150 DPI for screen use or 300 DPI for printing and zooming. This fixes the vast majority of blurry-output complaints.

What DPI should I use for PDF to JPG?

150 DPI for sharing and on-screen viewing, 300 DPI for printing, zooming, or OCR. 72 DPI is only acceptable for thumbnails, and 600 DPI is rarely worth the 4× file size over 300.

Does converting PDF to JPG reduce quality?

Yes, in two ways: rasterizing turns infinitely-scalable vector text into fixed pixels, and JPG compression is lossy. The text also stops being selectable and searchable. Convert a copy and keep the original PDF.

How do I convert every page of a PDF to JPGs at once?

Use Adobe Acrobat (File → Export To → Image → JPEG), any online converter (they return a ZIP of all pages), the iPhone Shortcuts method, or pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 input.pdf page in a terminal. Mac Preview and sips cannot — they're one page at a time.

Can I turn a multi-page PDF into a single JPG?

Not directly — JPG holds one image. Stitch pages vertically with ImageMagick: magick -density 150 input.pdf -append combined.jpg. Practical for a few pages, unwieldy beyond that.

Is JPG different from JPEG?

No — same format, same compression. "JPG" survives from the era when Windows file extensions were limited to three letters. Any tool that accepts one accepts the other.

Converting study material? You may not need JPGs at all

One last note for students, since that's who we build for. A lot of PDF-to-JPG conversions are really a workaround: turning lecture slides into images to paste into a notes app, or screenshotting textbook pages to make image flashcards. The problem is that images throw away everything useful about the PDF — the text stops being searchable, quotable, and quizzable.

If the end goal is studying the material rather than just displaying it, you can skip the conversion entirely: upload the PDF to Scholarly and it becomes a source you can chat with (with cited answers), turn into flashcards with spaced repetition, summarize, or convert into practice quizzes, an AI podcast, or a video lecture. It's free to start with no credit card — and your diagrams stay attached to the text that explains them, instead of living as JPG number forty-three in your camera roll.

For everything else — forms, uploads, sharing a page in a chat — the methods above have you covered. Pick the offline option when the document is sensitive, set 150–300 DPI, and your JPGs will come out sharp every time.

Related PDF guide: How to Add a Signature to a PDF (Free — Mac, Windows, iPhone & Android).