The tool draws each page of the PDF onto a canvas at the DPI you set and saves that drawing as an image. Text, vector lines and embedded photos are all flattened into pixels, so the result looks exactly like the page but can no longer be searched or edited as text. At the default 150 DPI an A4 page becomes an image of about 1240 by 1754 pixels; at 300 DPI it doubles in each direction.

A PDF is a set of drawing instructions, not a picture, which is why a browser, a chat app or a slide editor cannot drop it in as an image. PDF to JPG runs those instructions and photographs the result: every page is rendered at the DPI you set and saved as a bitmap. The image shows exactly what the page looked like, including fonts the recipient does not have installed and form fields already filled in, but the text inside it is pixels, so it can no longer be selected or searched. If you need editable text rather than a picture, PDF to Word or PDF to Text are the right tools.

Match the format to the content. JPG is the smallest choice for pages with photos and the one most portals and forms expect; the Quality (1-100) field trades sharpness for size, and 85 keeps text readable at normal zoom. PNG is lossless, so thin lines, small type and screenshots stay crisp with no blocky artefacts, at the cost of a bigger file; PDF to PNG is the dedicated page for that format. WebP produces the lightest files for web pages but is not accepted everywhere. For resolution, 150 DPI suits screens and presentations, 300 DPI is the usual print setting, and anything above that is for large-format printing or zooming into fine detail. The Convert PDF to Image page covers the three formats side by side.

Rendering a page is different from pulling out the photos placed on it. If you want the original embedded pictures at their stored resolution, without page margins or surrounding text, use Extract Images from PDF instead. Once you have the page images, Compress Image to KB brings a JPG under a portal limit such as 50 KB or 100 KB, and JPG to PDF turns edited or cropped pages back into a PDF. Fax and document-management systems that ask for a single multi-page file are better served by PDF to TIFF. All of these sit in the PDF Converter hub.

A short PDF is rendered right in your browser, one page at a time, and the ZIP is built there as well, so nothing waits in a queue. Long or heavy files go through an encrypted upload instead; they are converted automatically, never opened by a person, and removed from our servers within 2 hours. There is no account and no watermark on the images. On the free plan a task can hold up to 20 files and 2 GB in total, and you can run up to 30 tasks a day.