PDF to Image Save each page as a JPG or PNG

Why does my PDF to JPG look blurry?

Usually the resolution was too low. Text looks fuzzy when you zoom in if the page was converted at 72 or 150 DPI, so convert again at 300 or 600. A photo shown small on the page also gets few pixels. To get that photo at its stored size, extract the embedded images instead.

Should I use PNG or JPG for PDF pages?

Use PNG for pages that are mostly text, lines and tables. In our tests PNG files were 2.8 to 4.6 times smaller than JPG for those pages and kept edges sharp. Use JPG for photo-heavy pages, where it came out at about 36% to 39% of the PNG size up to 300 DPI.

Does a 100-page PDF cost 100 checks?

No. One conversion uses one check, whatever the page count, and a failed run uses none. Every page is rendered, and a job stops after 300 seconds. A long document at 600 DPI can hit that limit, so drop to 150 or 300 DPI, or split out the pages you need first.

Pixel dimensions for each resolution

PDF page sizes are stored in points, where 72 points make one inch. The converter renders each page at the DPI you pick, so the image width in pixels is the page width in points, divided by 72, multiplied by the DPI. An A4 page is 595.28 x 841.89 points and a US Letter page is 612 x 792 points.

Doubling the DPI doubles both sides of the image and so roughly quadruples the pixel count. At 600 DPI a single A4 page is close to 35 million pixels.

Measured output dimensions for one page

Measured file sizes in PNG and JPG

We converted two A4 pages in both formats. The text page holds a heading, two short columns and a small ruled table on a white background. The photo page is mostly covered by one large colour photograph with a caption below it.

File size of one converted A4 page (1024-byte units)

Reading those numbers

• At 600 DPI the two formats came close on the photo page. The embedded photo only had about 330 pixels per inch of real detail, so rendering above that adds smooth, enlarged pixels that PNG handles well.

Settings applied to every conversion

• PNG output uses the Ghostscript png16m device: 24-bit RGB with no transparency. Transparent areas of a page come out white.
• JPG output uses the jpeg device at quality 95 (-dJPEGQ=95), which keeps visible artefacts low at the cost of larger files.
• Text and vector graphics are anti-aliased with -dTextAlphaBits=4 and -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4, so edges are smoothed rather than jagged.
• Every page of the PDF is converted. Files are named page_001.png, page_002.png and so on, and the full set downloads as pdf_images.zip.
• The resolution menu offers 72, 150, 300 and 600 DPI. The server accepts any whole number from 72 to 600 and stops a conversion after 300 seconds.

Picking a resolution for where the image will go

A starting point by destination

When the output is not what you expected

• The error starts with Conversion failed: followed by Ghostscript output: the PDF is often password-protected or damaged. Remove the password with the unlock tool, or re-save the file in another program, then try again.
• You wanted only a few pages: the converter has no page-range field. Split out the pages you need first, then convert that smaller file.

Exporting pages with Preview, Acrobat or Ghostscript instead

Preview on a Mac exports the page you are looking at as PNG or JPEG with a resolution box, which is faster than this converter when you need one page for a slide. Acrobat Pro exports every page at once and adds TIFF and grayscale options. Chrome, Edge and Word have no page-to-image export; a screenshot from them is limited to screen resolution.

This converter is a wrapper around Ghostscript, so anyone with Ghostscript installed can run the same engine with the page range this tool lacks: gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=png16m -r150 -dFirstPage=3 -dLastPage=3 -sOutputFile=page-%03d.png report.pdf. Change -r150 for other resolutions, png16m to jpeg for JPG, or to pnggray and tiff24nc for formats this site does not offer.

Use PDFCheck when every page should become an image in one go, zipped and numbered, with nothing to install and a choice of 72 to 600 DPI. Output is PNG or JPG only; there is no Word, Excel, TIFF or SVG export here. For a long document, split out the pages you need first, since the converter renders all of them.

Before you convert pages to images

• How long are the images available, and who can open them? The uploaded PDF is deleted as soon as rendering finishes. The images and the ZIP stay until the hourly cleanup removes files more than 24 hours old. The results page and the ZIP only open in the browser session that ran the conversion, but each image has a plain file address under /storage/ that anyone with the exact link can open until the cleanup.
• Can I get a transparent PNG? No. The png16m device writes 24-bit RGB without an alpha channel, so transparent areas come out white. If what you want is a logo with its transparency, extract the embedded image instead; the extractor saves the transparency mask as a separate file.
• What if I type a resolution that is not in the menu? The server accepts any whole number from 72 to 600 and rejects anything else before rendering starts, with a validation error and no check used. API clients can pass, for example, 200.