How to Convert PDF to JPG or PNG: Resolution, Format and Quality Explained

Turn PDF pages into images for social media, slides, websites and chat. Which format to pick, what DPI means, and how to get sharp text in every image.

NewKitAppOctober 19, 2026 9 min read

PDFs are great for documents and awkward almost everywhere else. Instagram won't accept them. Most chat apps show them as a file icon instead of a preview. Slide software can import them only clumsily, and website builders want images. Converting a page to JPG or PNG solves all of that, and the conversion takes seconds.

Getting a good result takes a little more thought: the right format, the right resolution and a few tricks for text-heavy pages. This guide explains each choice so your images look sharp wherever they end up.

When to convert PDF pages to images

Social media posts: event flyers, infographics, menus and announcements.
Presentations: a page from a report as a slide, a chart as a picture.
Websites and blogs: a preview of a downloadable document, a product sheet.
Chat apps: a single page that people can see without opening a file.
Thumbnails: cover images for document libraries or course materials.
OCR and image processing: some tools need images as input.
Design work: placing a page in Canva, Photoshop or a video editor.

For everything else, especially multi-page documents people will read or print, keep the PDF.

The three formats

PDF to JPG offers JPG, PNG and WEBP. Each suits different content.

JPG

JPG (or JPEG) compresses by discarding fine detail the eye notices least. It's excellent for photos: small files, good quality.

Its weakness is sharp edges. Text, thin lines and flat-colour graphics get faint "ringing" artefacts, a slight smudge or halo around each letter. At high quality settings (90 percent and above) you barely see it; at low settings it's obvious.

Use JPG for: pages that are mostly photos, magazine-style layouts, brochures with large images, anything where file size matters more than crisp text.

PNG

PNG stores every pixel exactly, with no loss. Text and lines stay perfectly sharp.

The cost is size. A page full of photos can be several times larger as PNG than as JPG.

Use PNG for: text-heavy pages, forms, diagrams, charts, screenshots of documents, anything that will be zoomed into, and input for OCR.

WEBP

WEBP is a modern format that produces files 25 to 35 percent smaller than JPG at similar quality. All current browsers display it. Some older desktop software, including older versions of Microsoft Office and some image editors, can't open it.

Use WEBP for: images on your own website, where every kilobyte affects loading speed.

Quick decision

Mostly photos? JPG at 85 to 90 percent quality.
Mostly text or graphics? PNG.
For a website you control? WEBP.

Resolution: what DPI means here

A PDF page has a physical size in inches or millimetres. An image has a size in pixels. DPI (dots per inch) connects the two: it decides how many pixels you get for each inch of page.

For an A4 page (8.27 × 11.69 inches):

DPI	Image size	Good for
72	595 × 842 px	small thumbnails
100	827 × 1169 px	chat previews
150	1240 × 1754 px	screens, slides, social media
200	1654 × 2339 px	detailed screen viewing, zooming
300	2480 × 3508 px	printing, OCR

Higher DPI means sharper images and bigger files. A 300 DPI PNG of a text page can be 2 to 4 MB; at 150 DPI it's around a quarter of that.

Picking DPI for common uses

Instagram: posts display at 1080 pixels wide. 150 DPI gives an A4 page about 1240 pixels wide, enough to crop to 1080. For a square post, crop after converting.
LinkedIn and Facebook: 150 DPI is plenty.
WhatsApp and other chat apps: they recompress images, so anything above 150 DPI is wasted. Use 150.
Slides: a 1920-pixel-wide slide needs at least 150 DPI for a full-page image; use 200 if the page is the main content.
Printing the image: 300 DPI.
OCR: 300 DPI, PNG.

Step by step

Open PDF to JPG and choose your PDF. It stays on your device.
Choose the format: JPG, PNG or WEBP.
Set the resolution with the slider (150 DPI is a good default).
For JPG and WEBP, set the quality (85 to 90 percent for most uses).
Select pages: click thumbnails or type a range like 1, 3-5. All pages are selected by default.
Click Convert. One page downloads as a single image; several pages download as a ZIP with files named by page number.

Getting sharp text

Text is where conversions most often disappoint. These habits help:

Prefer PNG for text-heavy pages.
If you must use JPG, set quality to 90 percent or higher.
Raise DPI if the image will be viewed large or zoomed: 200 instead of 150.
Don't let chat apps recompress twice. Send the image once; forwarding it through several chats degrades it each time.
Crop the page first if it has wide margins. A page with 3 cm margins wastes a lot of pixels on white space. Trim it with Crop PDF before converting, so the text fills more of the image.

Transparent backgrounds

PDF pages usually represent white paper, and most PDFs have no transparency. The converter fills the background with white, which is what people expect. If you need a transparent background (for a logo extracted from a PDF, for instance), you'll need to remove the white in an image editor afterwards.

Converting images back to PDF

The reverse trip is easy: JPG to PDF places images on PDF pages, one per page, at A4, Letter or the image's own size. Remember that a page that went PDF → image → PDF has lost its text layer: the new PDF contains pictures of text, not searchable text. Keep the original PDF if you might need the text.

A worked example: an event flyer for three channels

A community centre has a one-page A4 flyer as a PDF for a weekend market. They want it on Instagram, in a WhatsApp group and printed on noticeboards.

Instagram: convert to PNG at 150 DPI (1240 × 1754 px). The flyer is portrait; Instagram allows 4:5 portrait posts at 1080 × 1350, so they crop the top and bottom slightly in their phone's photo editor. The text stays crisp because it's PNG.
WhatsApp: the same PNG works. WhatsApp recompresses it, but at 150 DPI the text survives.
Noticeboards: they print the original PDF, not an image. The PDF prints sharper than any image would.

One conversion covers two channels; the third uses the original.

Converting many pages

For a 40-page presentation exported as PDF, convert all pages at once. The ZIP contains name-page-1.jpg, name-page-2.jpg and so on. Unzip it on your computer (double-click on Windows or Mac) or in your phone's Files app.

For very large documents at high DPI, conversion uses a lot of memory. If your browser slows down, convert in batches by typing ranges: 1-20, then 21-40.

Reducing image file size

If the images are too large for a website or an upload form:

Lower the DPI (150 is enough for most screens).
Use JPG or WEBP instead of PNG for photo-heavy pages.
Lower JPG quality to 75 or 80 percent; check the result.
Crop margins before converting.

If what you really need is a smaller PDF rather than images, use Compress PDF instead. It shrinks images inside the PDF while keeping text as text.

Why not just take a screenshot?

A screenshot of an open PDF is the quickest way to get an image, and for a quick chat message it's fine. For anything that matters, conversion is better for three reasons. First, a screenshot's resolution depends on your screen and zoom level, so it's often lower than you need and includes toolbars or scrollbars you have to crop. Second, the same page converted at a chosen DPI gives a predictable, repeatable size, which matters when you prepare several images for a website or a slide deck and want them to match. Third, conversion renders the page itself, at full quality, without the reader's anti-aliasing tuned for your particular display. For a one-off, screenshot away. For anything you'll publish, convert.

Privacy

Converting a PDF online usually means uploading it. For a public flyer that's fine; for a bank statement you're turning into an image for a visa application, it isn't. NewKitApp renders pages to images in your browser using the same engine as Firefox's PDF viewer. The PDF and the images stay on your device.

Converting on a phone

You don't need a computer. On iPhone or Android:

Open the PDF to JPG page in Safari or Chrome.
Tap Choose PDF file and pick the document from Files, Downloads or a cloud drive.
Choose PNG or JPG and set 150 DPI.
Tap the pages you want, then Convert.
A single image opens or downloads; on iPhone, tap and hold it and choose Save to Photos so it appears in your camera roll for posting. Several pages arrive as a ZIP in Files; tap it to unpack.

Phones have less memory than computers, so for long documents convert in batches of ten to twenty pages.

Editing the image afterwards

Once the page is an image, any photo editor can adjust it:

Crop to the platform's aspect ratio: 1:1 or 4:5 for Instagram posts, 9:16 for stories, 16:9 for slides and YouTube thumbnails.
Highlight part of the page with a drawn circle or arrow for a chat explanation.
Blur personal details such as account numbers before posting.
Add text such as a date or a call to action for social posts.

Blurring in a photo editor is fine for images, because an image has no hidden text layer. Covering text with a black box in a PDF is not, since the text often survives underneath. Converting a page to an image and then blurring is a safe way to share part of a sensitive document.

Alt text when you post images of documents

When you post an image of a page online, people using screen readers can't read it. Most platforms let you add alt text: a short description of the image. For a flyer, write the essentials: "Weekend market, Saturday 9 to 2, Central Park, free entry". For a chart, describe the main point. It takes ten seconds and makes your post usable for everyone, and search engines read alt text too.

Common mistakes

Using JPG for text-only pages and wondering why the letters look smudged.
Converting at 72 DPI and getting a blurry, tiny image.
Converting at 600 DPI for a chat app that shrinks it to 1000 pixels anyway.
Forwarding images through several chats, each recompressing them.
Converting a whole document to images when the recipient needed the text. Send the PDF.

Common questions

Can I convert just one page? Yes. Click its thumbnail or type its number.

Why does my image have a white border? The PDF page has margins. Crop the PDF first, or crop the image afterwards.

Why are the colours slightly different? PDFs can use colour profiles; images are saved as standard sRGB. Differences are usually small.

Can I get the images that are inside a PDF, rather than the whole page? This tool renders whole pages. To extract individual embedded images at their original resolution, use a dedicated image extraction tool or a desktop PDF editor.

Does it work on a phone? Yes. The tool runs in mobile browsers, and the images or ZIP save to your Files or Downloads folder.

Summary

Convert PDF pages to images when they need to appear on social media, in slides, on websites or in chat previews. Choose PNG for text and graphics, JPG for photos and WEBP for your own website. Use 150 DPI for screens and 300 for printing or OCR. Crop margins first, keep JPG quality high for anything with text, and keep the original PDF for printing and for anyone who needs to read or search the text.