PDF to JPG without losing quality: the 3 things that decide it
By the getPDF team · Published 11 October 2026
The short answer
A PDF page has no fixed resolution, so “quality” in a JPG is decided by 3 things: the DPI you render at, the JPG quality setting, and what was on the page to begin with. For a sharp result, convert at 300 dpi for print or 150 dpi for screens, keep the quality at 85 or raise it to 95 for text pages, and use PNG instead when the page is mostly text or line art. A scan cannot get sharper than it was scanned, whatever you pick.
Try it here, nothing is uploaded
Drop the PDF, set Resolution and Quality, and press Make the images. It runs on your device and nothing is uploaded. The rest of this page shows what each setting does, with sizes measured on our test pages on 11 October 2026.
Why “without losing quality” is 3 questions in 1
Text and drawings in a PDF are instructions (“this letter, this size, here”), not pixels. They are sharp at any zoom. The moment you turn a page into a JPG you freeze it at one pixel grid and compress it once. 3 decisions shape that moment:
- Resolution (DPI) decides how many pixels the page becomes. Too few and letters turn into soft blobs when the image is enlarged.
- The JPG quality setting decides how much detail the compression throws away. Too low and you see grey smudges around every letter.
- The content decides the ceiling. Vector text can be drawn at any DPI; a scan holds only the pixels the scanner took.
Get the first 2 right and only the third remains, which no converter can change.
DPI is the big lever
DPI is dots per inch: how many pixels each inch of the page becomes. An A4 page is 8.27 inches wide, so 150 dpi gives 1240 pixels across and 300 dpi gives 2480. These are the real outputs of PDF to JPG on 2 of our A4 test pages at the default quality of 85:
| Resolution | Pixels (A4) | Text page (44 lines of 10 pt type) | Report page (a photo and text) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 72 dpi | 595 x 842 | 125 KB | 91 KB |
| 150 dpi | 1240 x 1754 | 403 KB | 285 KB |
| 300 dpi | 2480 x 3508 | 1.1 MB | 788 KB |
| 600 dpi | 3363 x 4756 | 1.7 MB | 1.3 MB |
At 72 dpi, 10 pt text is about 10 pixels tall: readable at its own size, blurry as soon as anyone zooms or prints. At 150 dpi the same line is about 21 pixels tall, which is comfortable on any screen. At 300 dpi it is print quality.
Look at the 600 dpi row: the pixels do not double again. The tool draws at most 16 million pixels per page, so a full A4 page at 600 dpi stops at 3363 x 4756 px, which is 407 dpi; the result says so, and the image records its real resolution. For a whole page that is more than you will ever see; 600 dpi reaches its full value on small pages and on crops, such as a stamp or a chart cut out first with Crop PDF.
The full table of sizes per DPI, including PNG, is in the DPI guide.
The quality setting: where the smudges come from
JPG was designed for photographs. It splits the picture into 8 x 8 pixel blocks and simplifies each one; on soft photo detail you never notice, but on a hard black edge against white paper the simplification shows as faint grey ringing around the letter. The Quality box (10 to 100, 85 by default) sets how far that goes.
What the curve says:
- 85 is the sensible default. Above it, size climbs fast: 95 costs half again as much as 85, and 100 more than double, for differences few eyes can see on a photo.
- Text pages are the exception. Edges are where JPG loses, so on a page of small type, 95 is worth its size if you must stay in JPG. Better still, use PNG (next section).
- Below 50, text pages fall apart first. At quality 10 a photo still looks like a photo; letters grow visible blocks.
One detail in your favour: getPDF writes JPGs without halving the colour resolution (no chroma subsampling, which cameras use), so a red stamp or a blue link keeps a crisp edge instead of bleeding.
When PNG is the no-loss answer
PNG is lossless: every pixel is stored exactly. For pages made of text, lines, tables and logos it is the format that genuinely loses nothing beyond the DPI you chose, and it is often smaller than JPG too. On our sparse 3-line invoice page at 150 dpi, the JPG is 78 KB and the PNG 43 KB; on a chart page, 237 KB against 208 KB. Only on photo pages does JPG win clearly: our report page is 285 KB as JPG and 658 KB as PNG.
PDF to PNGTransparent background option. Free, runs on your device.The rule: photo or scan, JPG at 85. Text, chart or diagram, PNG. Anything you will edit or convert again, PNG, because every new JPG save compresses again. JPG or PNG has the side by side numbers.
When the source is the limit
A scanned PDF is already pixels. If the scanner saved the page at 200 dpi, rendering it at 600 dpi does not add detail; it stretches the same pixels over a bigger grid. Our small test scan (a 148 x 105 mm page scanned at 200 dpi) shows it plainly:
- Stored inside the PDF: 1165 x 826 px, 34 KB.
- Rendered at 600 dpi: 3495 x 2478 px, 362 KB as JPG. 10 times the file, no letter any sharper.
To see what a scan holds before you pick a DPI, open it in Inspect: the Largest image line gives its pixel size. Divide the width in pixels by the page width in inches and you have the scan’s real DPI. Render at that number, or skip rendering and take the stored picture out untouched with Extract images, which copies a JPEG byte for byte.
The honest part
- JPG is always lossy. Even at quality 100 the image is compressed; it is just compressed very lightly. If you need “no loss” in the strict sense, use PNG.
- No setting brings back what is not in the file. A blurry scan stays blurry; a low resolution photo placed large in the PDF stays soft.
- An image is a copy, not the document. The text in a JPG cannot be selected, searched or read aloud. Keep the PDF as the master and convert a copy for the slide, the chat or the listing. For editable text instead of a picture, see PDF to Word, Excel or text.
The pillar guide, PDF to images, covers every other route out of a PDF.
Questions
What DPI should I use for a sharp JPG?
150 dpi for anything read on a screen (an A4 page becomes 1240 x 1754 px), 300 dpi for print or for zooming into detail (2480 x 3508 px). 72 dpi is only for thumbnails. Higher than 300 rarely shows a difference and costs file size.
Why does my JPG look blurry in Word or PowerPoint?
Usually it was made at 72 dpi and then stretched to fill the page or slide, so each pixel is shown 2 or 3 times as large. Convert again at 150 or 300 dpi. Office can also shrink pictures on save; Word in Microsoft 365 defaults to 220 ppi (Microsoft Support, checked on 11 October 2026).
Is PNG better than JPG for text?
For text, line art and anything you will convert again, yes: PNG is lossless, so no compression marks appear around letters. On a sparse invoice page at 150 dpi the PNG is even smaller, 43 KB against 78 KB for the JPG. For photo pages JPG is about half the size.
Does the quality setting change the pixel size?
No. The DPI decides the pixel size; the quality setting (10 to 100, 85 by default) only decides how hard the JPG compresses those pixels. At 150 dpi a text page is 254 KB at quality 50 and 883 KB at quality 100, both 1240 x 1754 px.
The tools for this job
Keep reading
- PDF to images: get JPG or PNG out of any PDFTurn PDF pages into JPG or PNG on your device: pick the format, set the DPI, convert only the pages you need.
- PDF to image DPI: 72, 150 or 300, and what each is forPick the right DPI for PDF to JPG or PNG: 72 for thumbnails, 150 for screens, 300 for print.
- PDF to JPG or PNG: which format to pick, with real sizesJPG is smaller for photo pages, PNG keeps text sharp and can be transparent.
- Extract images from a PDF at original quality, or render the page?Pull the embedded photos out of a PDF at the quality they were stored, instead of screenshotting pages.
- Scanned PDF back to JPG: get the scans out as they were savedGet the pictures back out of a scanned PDF: extract the stored scans at full quality instead of re-drawing the pages, 1 image per page.