NovaYou need a page as a picture when it's going into a slide deck, a chat app, a website that only accepts images, or a social post. This guide shows how the format and quality settings change the result, using measurements from two very different PDFs.
How to convert a PDF to images, step by step
- Open the converter. Go to novapdftool.com/pdf-to-jpg on a computer or phone.
- Add your PDF. Drop one PDF onto the box or click Browse files. A thumbnail of every page appears, with a line telling you how many image files will be created.
- Choose the format. Pick JPG for scans and photos, or PNG for digital documents with small text, charts or line art.
- Choose the image quality. Normal renders each page at about 108 DPI, which suits screens and chat apps. High renders at about 180 DPI for zooming in or printing.
- Convert and download. Click Convert to JPG (or Convert to PNG). A one-page PDF downloads as a single image. Longer PDFs come back as one zip file with an image per page.
- Unzip and check. Open the zip, then open the first image at full size to make sure the text is sharp enough for what you need.
What the two settings actually do
The converter draws each page onto a canvas in your browser at a fixed scale, then saves it as an image. Two settings control the result:
- Image quality sets the scale. Normal draws pages at 1.5 times their size in points, which is about 108 DPI. High draws them at 2.5 times, about 180 DPI. An A4 page becomes 893 × 1263 pixels on Normal and 1488 × 2105 on High. A US Letter page becomes 918 × 1188 or 1530 × 1980.
- Format sets how the pixels are stored. JPG is saved at 92% quality, which keeps text clean while letting photos and scan grain compress well. PNG is lossless: every pixel is kept exactly, at a cost in file size that depends heavily on the page.
The resolution is the same no matter how the PDF was made. A scan made at 300 DPI still comes out at 108 or 180 DPI, so if you need every bit of the original scan's detail, keep the PDF as well.
What we measured
How we tested: we ran the live NovaPDFTool code in Chrome 155 on a Windows laptop (Intel Core i5-12450H, 16 GB RAM) on 17 October 2026, using sample files we built for testing. Times are the middle of three runs. A phone or an older computer will take longer, so treat the times as a comparison between settings, not a promise. The files were a 20-page text report (US Letter, real PDF text, 28.8 KB) and a 10-page colour scan at 300 DPI (A4, 18.43 MB) with visible paper grain, like a real scan. Times run from clicking Convert to the finished download, including the zip.
| Setting | Image size | Each image | Zip download | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPG, Normal | 918 × 1188 | 128 KB | 2.50 MB | 1.4 s |
| PNG, Normal | 918 × 1188 | 129 KB | 2.52 MB | 1.3 s |
| JPG, High | 1530 × 1980 | 251 KB | 4.91 MB | 1.8 s |
| PNG, High | 1530 × 1980 | 341 KB | 6.65 MB | 1.7 s |
| Setting | Image size | Each image | Zip download | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPG, Normal | 893 × 1263 | 219 KB | 2.14 MB | 1.8 s |
| PNG, Normal | 893 × 1263 | 2.31 MB | 23.07 MB | 2.8 s |
| JPG, High | 1488 × 2105 | 896 KB | 8.75 MB | 2.1 s |
| PNG, High | 1488 × 2105 | 6.76 MB | 67.65 MB | 4.7 s |
Before converting, the tool also reads the PDF and draws the page thumbnails. That took about 0.7 seconds for the report and 1.5 seconds for the scan.
JPG or PNG? What the numbers say
For scans and photos, choose JPG. Paper grain and photo detail are exactly what PNG struggles to store. Our scan images were about 11 times bigger as PNG at Normal quality, and the 10 PNG pages at High quality came to 67.65 MB, too big for most email services. JPG kept the same pages under 9 MB.
For pages made on a computer, PNG costs little. On the text report, PNG was the same size as JPG at Normal quality and about a third bigger at High. At normal zoom we couldn't tell the two apart. PNG is still the safer choice for charts, diagrams and small print you plan to zoom into or edit, because it never adds compression artifacts around sharp edges.
The quality setting matters more than the format for most uses. High roughly doubled the size of JPGs from the text report and quadrupled it on the scan, so use it when you'll zoom in, print, or crop part of a page, and stay on Normal for a quick share.
Single pages and zip files
A one-page PDF downloads straight away as page-1.jpg (or .png). Anything longer comes back as one zip named after your PDF, such as report-images.zip, with the pages numbered in order. Browsers handle one download far better than dozens.
On Windows, right-click the zip and choose Extract All. On a Mac, double-click it. On an iPhone, tap the zip in the Files app and it unpacks into a folder. On Android, open it in the Files app and tap Extract.
Every page is always converted. If you only want a few, use Extract Pages first to make a shorter PDF, then convert that.
Common uses and the setting to pick
- Sharing a page in WhatsApp or another chat app: JPG, Normal. Small and quick to send.
- A slide in a presentation: PNG, High for a page with charts or small text. JPG, High for a scanned page.
- A website or form that only accepts images: JPG, Normal first. Move to High only if the text is hard to read.
- Printing a page as a picture: High, which gives the most pixels this tool makes (about 180 DPI). For the sharpest print, print the PDF itself.
Going the other way, from photos to a PDF, is covered in our guide to converting photos or scans to PDF.