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Which resolution to choose for PDF to JPG

A PDF page has no pixels until something draws it. The resolution you pick decides how many it gets, and how heavy the images will be.

Reviewed by Victor Yuki Matusita on . First published . First version, with the measurements of November 2, 2026.

Text and drawings in a PDF are stored as shapes, not as dots. To turn a page into a JPG, a program draws the page onto a grid of pixels, and the resolution, in pixels per inch, sets how fine that grid is. Ask for more and every letter gets more pixels, and the file gets bigger.

PDF to JPG offers 72 ppi for the screen, 150 ppi for general use and 300 ppi for printing. Here is what each one gave on five of our test PDFs, so you can pick the smallest that does the job.

Turn your PDF pages into images here

Drop a PDF and each page becomes a JPG at 150 ppi, in this browser tab, with nothing uploaded. Change the resolution or the format and the images are made again; several pages come back as one ZIP.

Drop PDFs here

or paste with Ctrl+V · PDF files, as many as you likePDF files, as many as you like

Image format

JPG files are smaller (quality 92). PNG loses nothing, so text and thin lines stay crisp, but the files are larger.

Resolution
Pages

Open the PDF to JPG tool

Pixels grow with the square of the resolution

Resolution counts pixels along one inch, and a page has two sides. So doubling the resolution doubles the width and the height, and multiplies the pixels by four. The first page of the IRS Form 1040 came out at 612 × 792 pixels at 72 ppi, 1,275 × 1,650 at 150 ppi and 2,550 × 3,300 at 300 ppi.

Going from 150 ppi to 300 ppi gave 4.0 times the pixels on that page, and the same on every PDF we tried. The file did not grow quite as fast: the JPG of that page went from 326 KB to 827 KB, 2.5 times as heavy.

For the screen

72 ppi gives the smallest images. That is enough for a preview, a thumbnail or a picture in a chat, and the files are small: the first page of the form weighed 111 KB, and the first page of the lecture notes 55.8 KB.

Small print gets hard to read at this setting once you zoom in. If someone needs to read the text in the image, go up one step.

For most uses

150 ppi is the default, and the right choice when you are not sure. Text stays readable when you zoom in on a phone, and the files stay easy to send. Going from 72 ppi to 150 ppi made the JPG of the form’s first page 2.9 times as heavy, for a page that reads well on any screen.

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For printing

300 ppi is for paper. Printed text and fine lines need the extra pixels to look sharp, and the extra weight is the cost: the first page of the lecture notes went from 191 KB at 150 ppi to 538 KB at 300 ppi.

More resolution only helps when the PDF has the detail to give. Our scanned book page holds one picture 770 pixels wide, which is 150 ppi over the width of the page. At 300 ppi that picture is simply stretched over twice as many pixels in each direction: the image grew from 197 KB to 529 KB and showed nothing new. For a scanned PDF, match the resolution of the scan, or stay below it.

JPG or PNG for a page

The tool can also save each page as PNG, which loses nothing. For a page of photos that is costly: the first page of our PDF of photos weighed 2.9 MB as PNG against 431 KB as JPG at 150 ppi, 6.7 times as much.

For pages of text the gap is smaller, and it depends on the browser that writes the PNG. On the form’s first page at 150 ppi, the PNG was 1.3 times the JPG in Chromium and 0.5 times in WebKit. PNG keeps text perfectly crisp, so for a page of text or a diagram it is worth trying both.

Black and white scans can tip the other way. On the first page of the scanned NASA report at 300 ppi, the PNG weighed 542 KB against 571 KB for the JPG in Chromium: a page of black text on white paper packs well without loss, and JPG spends bytes on smudges around every letter.

A quick way to choose

Pick 72 ppi for previews and chats, 150 ppi for reading on a screen and for most uploads, and 300 ppi only for printing or for a page with fine detail that someone will zoom into. Choose JPG for photos and scans in color, and try PNG for text, charts and forms.

If you only need some pages, turn just those into images with the page range, rather than every page at the highest setting.

What we measured

The first page of each PDF at the three resolutions of the tool, in JPG and PNG. Pixels are width by height.

The first page of each PDF at each resolution: its size in pixels, and the size of the JPG and of the PNG
FileResolutionPixelsJPGPNG
Scanned book page in color72 ppi369 × 47763.7 KB348 KB
Scanned book page in color150 ppi770 × 995197 KB1.2 MB
Scanned book page in color300 ppi1,540 × 1,990529 KB3.8 MB
Scanned NASA report, black and white72 ppi610 × 78666.3 KB120 KB
Scanned NASA report, black and white150 ppi1,270 × 1,637207 KB310 KB
Scanned NASA report, black and white300 ppi2,541 × 3,275571 KB542 KB
IRS Form 104072 ppi612 × 792111 KB148 KB
IRS Form 1040150 ppi1,275 × 1,650326 KB418 KB
IRS Form 1040300 ppi2,550 × 3,300827 KB1.0 MB
Lecture notes with embedded fonts72 ppi595 × 84155.8 KB110 KB
Lecture notes with embedded fonts150 ppi1,240 × 1,753191 KB308 KB
Lecture notes with embedded fonts300 ppi2,480 × 3,507538 KB797 KB
PDF made of photos72 ppi792 × 612133 KB762 KB
PDF made of photos150 ppi1,650 × 1,275431 KB2.9 MB
PDF made of photos300 ppi3,300 × 2,5501.1 MB9.2 MB

Measured on November 2, 2026 through the PDF to JPG page of this site in Chromium 156 and in WebKit 27.2 on Windows, on the first and the second page of five PDFs of our tests, the real documents and a PDF of photos (the scanned book has a single page). The pixels were the same in both browsers; the table shows the Chromium files.

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