How do I convert a PDF page to JPG?
Converting a PDF page to JPG means drawing the page onto a canvas, pixel by pixel, then saving that canvas as a JPEG photo. Choose a PDF, click Convert, and this tool renders the first page with pdf.js, Mozilla's PDF engine, then gives you page-1.jpg to preview and download.
pdf.js is the same renderer Firefox uses for its built-in PDF viewer, so fonts, vector drawings and embedded images come out the way you'd see them on screen. It runs in a background worker inside your browser; the PDF bytes stay on your machine.
Output settings at a glance
| Setting | Value | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Pages converted | Page 1 only | Use Split PDF to pick another page |
| Scale | 2 pixels per PDF point | 144 pixels per inch |
| JPEG quality | 0.92 (on a 0 to 1 scale) | High quality, mild compression |
| Background | White | Transparent areas become white |
| Page rotation | Applied | The page is drawn the way a PDF viewer would display it |
| File name | page-1.jpg |
The quality figure is the value passed to the browser's canvas.toDataURL() encoder. At 0.92, text edges are clean enough for reading and slides, while the file stays far smaller than a lossless PNG of the same page.
How big will the image be?
PDF pages are measured in points, 72 to the inch (ISO 32000-1, section 8.3.2). The tool renders at scale 2, so the image is twice the page's point size, rounded down to whole pixels:
| Page size | Size in points | JPG size in pixels |
|---|---|---|
| US Letter | 612 x 792 | 1224 x 1584 |
| US Legal | 612 x 1008 | 1224 x 2016 |
| A4 | about 595 x 842 | about 1190 x 1684 |
| A5 | 420 x 595 | 840 x 1190 |
| 16:9 slide (13.33 x 7.5 in) | 960 x 540 | 1920 x 1080 |
That last row is handy: a PowerPoint deck in the default widescreen size, exported as PDF, converts to exactly 1920 x 1080. For a social post or email you may want it smaller; the image resizer handles that without another round trip through PDF.
Converting a page other than the first
- Open Split PDF and set both start and end page to the page you want, for example 7 and 7.
- Download the one-page
split.pdf. - Choose that file here and click Convert.
- Click Download and rename
page-1.jpgto something meaningful.
For a whole document, repeat for each page. It's tedious beyond a handful of pages; that's the honest trade-off of a tool that never uploads your file.
JPG or PNG?
Pick JPG for pages that are mostly photographs, or when file size matters more than perfectly crisp text. Pick PNG for pages of text, charts, diagrams and screenshots, where JPEG's compression can leave faint smudges around sharp edges. The PDF to PNG converter uses the same renderer and resolution, only the output format differs. If the JPG is still too heavy, run it through the image compressor to trade a little more quality for size.
Errors and limits
| Message | Cause |
|---|---|
| "Choose a PDF file." | No file chosen |
| "That file isn't a PDF" | The file is neither labelled as a PDF nor starts with the %PDF- signature, for example a JPG picked by mistake. A real PDF saved without a .pdf extension still works, because its contents are checked |
| "Could not render that PDF: No password given" | The PDF needs a password to open |
| "Could not render that PDF:" plus another reason | The file is damaged or not really a PDF |
Very large pages, such as architectural drawings or posters, can produce a canvas bigger than the browser allows. MDN notes that most browsers accept more than 10,000 x 10,000 pixels but iOS devices cap canvases at 4,096 x 4,096, and drawing fails beyond the limit (MDN, canvas element). An A0 poster (2384 x 3370 points) renders at 4768 x 6740 pixels, well past that iPhone limit, so use a desktop browser for oversized pages.
Fonts that aren't embedded in the PDF are substituted, as in any viewer, so a document relying on fonts installed on the author's machine may look slightly different. The output box on the page shows the image as a data: URL; use the Download link to save the actual file.
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