The solution begs the question ““ why convert a PDF document to a JPG image? The answer lies in the way we view PDF documents.
- PDF requires an external application like Adobe Acrobat Reader (or any other free variants) while JPG does not.
- Browsers have the built-in capability to display images while handling PDF documents requires an external application or plug-in which may or may not be present.
- An external application comes with the handicap of loading times. Plus the rendering of a PDF document happens only after the complete document is downloaded while images can be streamed in.
- Office applications also do a better job of handling images in comparison to PDF. To cite an example, a PowerPoint presentation with an embedded image goes faster than with a PDF document.
So, in some specific cases converting your PDF documents to an image format like JPG or JPEG could be the solution we are looking for.
1. Convert PDF to JPG (The Web Way)
No installations ““ just browse to these websites, upload your files and it’s done.
Zamzar
Perhaps, the most well known of the file conversion sites. Zamzar has been previously mentioned in Top Online File Converters. The process to convert PDF to JPG is simplicity personified: Choose the file to convert then choose the format to convert to (e.g. JPG) then enter your email address to receive the converted file then convert.
The minuses with the free service are that the file size is limited to 100MB with just 5 simultaneous conversions. Also, you might feel a wee bit uneasy uploading sensitive data without encryption support.
YouConvertIt (Beta)
Another previous mention at MakeUseOf but just warrants a second look here because it too does a similar job of converting a PDF file to its JPG equivalent. You can upload 5 files at the same time.
As YouConvertIt is still in beta, expect some conversion attempt failures.
Neevia Document Converter
Neevia Technology has a web interface which facilitates the conversion of PDF documents to image files. Select the conversion settings and upload your file. The converted file can be rendered in the browser or can be downloaded via an email link. Two dropdowns further give you control over image quality and resolution. The only visible restriction is the 1MB file upload size limit.
If you are wary of uploading sensitive files over the net, you need to look beyond the online solutions to something much more local. Thankfully these three pieces of free software take up the task.
2. PDF to JPG Converters for The Desktop
PDF-Xchange Viewer (Windows)
(Update: This software is no longer available)
PDF-Xchange Viewer is a light feature-rich PDF document reader. The free version of the software is a capable document handler with most of the standard features expected. Add comments and annotations, mark-up pages with texts and objects, type within the PDF document along with plug-ins for both IE and Firefox are also included.
But the feature which interests us is the ability of the software to export a file or a page to the supported image formats like JPEG, BMP, TIFF, PNG and more.
Open the PDF file in the viewer, click on File ““ Export to Image and the dialog opens up where you can set the pages to convert, the image type to convert to and the destination folder. More importantly, the “˜Export Mode’ setting allows you to designate the number of image files for the subject PDF file. The “˜Page Zoom’, “˜Resolution’ and “˜Page Background’ also allow added finishing touches.
OmniFormat (Windows)
“˜Omni’ means all and the OmniFormat document conversion utility lives up to the name. The free version permits active conversion and image handling of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, XML, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG.
Using OmniFormat requires the installation of Pdf995 (it’s free too). Pdf995 is a fast and flexible PDF printer driver which makes it easy to publish PDF documents from any program. Pdf995 needs to be installed prior to the installation of OmniFormat. The free version of the software opens with a timed ad display.
This annoying part done with, the software itself is uncomplicated. It sets up a “˜Watch’ folder (or lets you set it up yourself). Any PDF file that has to be converted to JPG is copied into this folder. With the press of the “˜Single Pass’ button each single page of the PDF gets converted into the JPG format. With the “˜Start Monitoring’ button, PDF files can be repeatedly dropped into the watch folder for conversion.
Note of Caution: OmniFormat deletes the original PDF file in the watch folder after conversion”¦so be sure to copy the file you want to convert.
Virtual Image Printer Driver (Windows)
This open source application installs as an additional printer on the Printer’s applet and can convert any printable document to a BMP, PNG, JPG, TIFF or a PDF file. The Virtual Image Printer driver is based on the Microsoft universal printer driver core.
To convert PDF to JPG, simply open the PDF file and print it by selecting the Image Printer Driver in the “˜Print’ dialog. The image file format and the compression range can be set in the Image Printer options box.
And When Everything Fails…
If you are away from a net connection and in want of the software’, the trusty “˜Print Screen’ button aided with any image handling application like MS Paint or IrfanView can do a stand-in job. I should know ““ I went this way before I came across the other six ways.
Do you know of any other methods to convert PDF to JPG?
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A solution to some of the reasons you might need to convert it is to upload it to Google Docs and view it that way.
Many times we need include the images in the presentations and other research works, google docs will fail in that way !
Yeah agree that it may be the solution to few of the reasons !
how about installing ImageMagick and typing
convert foo.pdf foo.jpgYes, Imagemagick is an option but being a command line tool, I thought the average user might find it a bit intimidating. Also PDF being a post-script format rather than a raster format, the handling gets a bit more complicated.
For me, the simple command line was the simplest solution. No new software to learn, no concern for privacy by using a web service. And I don’t think I had to install anything since the command worked as it. (Using Ubuntu Linux).
Online PDF Viewer works pretty well as well:
http://www.effingfree.com/online-pdf-viewer/
I asked this question of how to convert PDF to image some days back,but I have not satisfied with programs that gave the output ,thanks for the stuff you mentioned will be very useful,zamzar and medi-convert both are very useful online converters.
Zamzar is always the best online file converter. Just upload the a file, check email for the download link of converted file. That’s really easy for most users even novice ones.
I find Zamzar annoying: it nags you to subscribe and you have to wait ages for the email that you think might not be coming.
This is something I havnt thought about doing something like this, Im definitely going to be checking it out. I just subscribed today and you have lots of great info in here for us :-)
I don’t currently have adobe reader installed, so correct me if i’m wrong, but isn’t there an option in either File or Edit to copy pdf to clipboard? then you can just paste it into Paint or whatnot
Man, just use GIMP, it can import any PDF, render it as a raster graphic to save in any image format you want, easy was pie. You can do this on Linux, Mac, and Windows.
THIS.
Find GIMPPortable (see PortableApps.com) for a trivial no-ad no-hassle no-impact installation of GIMP (unzip to folder, run). Sooooooo easy (open .PDF, give size/resolution, save to whatever raster format you want).
For windows I usually prefer to use the PDFCreator. It is capable to print anything which is pritnable to almost any image format including the PDF too. And it is open source.
use the Acrobat reader photo tool, select the area you are interested in and then paste into Powerpoint and save as *.jpg…
(free provided you have Office, else you could use open source office)
This works great. Just like snipping tool on Vista and 7. For Reader 9 go to tools, Select & Zoom, then select Snapshot Tool.
Simple with a Mac. Click the PDF and it opens in Preview (part of Apple OSx) . Click “Save as” and select one of the 12 formats available.
This was awesome advice! Thanks so much – so helpful!!!!!!!!!!
Jus use a mac, open your pdf and save it in the moste polpualr format.
It’s a shame you poor windows and linux users don’t have native PDF capability like MacOS X. If I want to view a PDF document from the finder, I just tap the space bar and it pops up in the native PDF viewer.
PDF is a much better format than JPG. The sort of thinking in this lame article leads to people doing exceptionally stupid things like sending a bunch of JPGs enclosed in a PowerPoint file.
What about Gimp? Open, choose your desired resolution, edit what you want, save as whatever you like.
You are all retarded… JPG is a terrible format to turn anything with text in to.
Well then why don’t you provide a recommendation, rather than just criticism.
Huh? On a Mac, it’s a no-brainer, but on anything else, from Solaris to Windows, load the PDF into gimp (gimp.org) pick the resolution to render the PDF in, then save it as anything else – and for text, BTW, which is what most PDFs are, jpeg is the WORST target format.
Unfortunately this solution breaks the first law of web accessibility – “Provide a text alternative for all non-text content”. If you are going to go down this route, then you MUST provide a text alternative to the image, which is no easy task considering the amount of text contained in most PDFs…
I open my PDFs in Photoshop and convert, resize, etc that way. Also use Foxit PDF reader. Very small standalone exe.
How about Vuzit: http://vuzit.com/share
It’s an online document viewer that supports much more than just PDFs.
just why? This is something you should never have to do. 9 times out of 10 you are either sending something that you created so can put it in a different format or you will get it from the web where google can convert a pdf to HTML
easy on a mac: File – Print – Print PDF to iPhoto – JPG goodness
IrfanView http://www.irfanview.com/ , a free-to-use image editor/converter program, is a good program to convert a PDF file to a set of JPEG page files. It auto-numbers the JPEGs for the pages with the original filename + _0001, _0002, etc.
Installation requires the IrfanView program, IrfanView plugins, and Ghostscript from Sourceforge http://sourceforge.net/
I used this to experiment with converting the pages of an eBook PDF file to a set of JPEGs, and burning it to DVD for display on a DVD Player + TV. It worked fine. I thought it might have some application in education or doing presentations without a TV Projector. The JPEGs could also be displayed on portable media players, etc.
In IrfanView (with plugins and Ghostscript) http://www.irfanview.com/, Options menu, Extract All Frames lets you write all the pages of a PDF file out to a set of JPEG pages.
I use Mac. Gimp or even easier, Preview. which opens faster than I can get my fingers off the key.
The main reason to convert a pdf to jpg is to make the file smaller. Pdf’s have all the file info in them. A 3D cad file (or maybe a many layer image file) can be huge. Convert to jpg and all you get is the visible layer. Then convert back to pdf to preserve quality, as jpg’s degrade at every saving.
You can try the online converters. The software ones are for Windows.
Of this list, I would recommend PDF-Xchange Viewer.
Saikat was right. The program is extremely feature rich, yet leaves a light footprint on the computer. It installed in less than 30 seconds (the computer I installed the program on was purchased four years ago) and launched in less than 10 seconds after installation!
Straightaway, I imported a 200 page pdf (which by the way was secured/encrypted) and exported each page as a separate, single page image file. It worked like a charm. It took less than 3 minutes to export all of the pages, and I could view the ones that were already finished with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer while it continued to export in the background!
5 stars for this program. I have tried using Zamzar (it would not render the text properly with my secured/encrypted pdf’s) and Universal Document Converter (free version places a HUGE watermark on the bottom right corners and full version costs $69) but this one converts pdf’s to images with no problems AND NO COST! It was exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks for this great guide Saikat!
Hi Pete,
It’s great that the info helped and thanks….
No one has mentioned coolwire, just email your PDF as an attachment to doc@koolwire.com (<10MB) and in seconds get it bounced back as an RTF with embedded rasterized image. Can even do batches :)
Than ks for this info Topaz…will check it out in detail. At first glance seems to be good.
Than ks for this info Topaz…will check it out in detail. At first glance, the beta seems to be good.
I’ve always just opened the PDF in Adobe Reader, go to Edit, selected all, Copy File to Clipboard, then opened Microsoft Picture Manager, pasted it it in, and then Exported as a either as BMP, PNG, JPG,TIFF, or GIF. It requires no software that costs anything and gets the job done.
pdf x-changer viewer is excellent!
hi all, can some 1 suggest a methodology as to how i can convert a non printable pdf to a printable version?thanks a tonnne in advance
Use http://pdfpirate.net/ to unlock the PDF
and then you can print it without any hassle.
Makeuseof review: http://www.makeuseof.com/dir/pdf-pirate-pdf-restrictions-remover-freeware/
I know this site also: convertpdftoimage.com
Another way is: Install any “print to jpg file” driver and print pdf there.
greaT :)
convert works best for me. No spypare or difficult procedures. No waiting for emails.
GIMP is easiest, I wouldn’t recommend online conversions because of security reasons, don’t want my personal stuff to fall in the wrong hands.
Thanks so much for sharing these, I was having a terrible time finding a converter that didn’t convert the images horribly. Thanks!
Thanks for the Info.. It was very helpful!
OK, first, thank for the list, but nothing really does the job as it should. Except for the paid versions?
I have thousands of PDFs, each of which have hundred of pages, want to have them all in JPEG.
About Mac: only one page works for Preview > Save as JPEG, if I have a 130 pages PDF I have to save pages 1 by 1? Tried 3 min and got tired. Somebody said about using Automator, can you explain?
Why do I need JPG?: I want to read a PDF en my PSP, or whatever, that is not the point.
No you don’t have to do it for each page one by one. Simply while in Preview, go to print, and on the small dialog box that appears click on the button that says PDF, a drop list will appear and select save PDF to iPhoto. This of course will take a while, depending on the size of the pdf, but when it’s done, simply open iPhoto and you can sync your photo (and you pdf) to any device you want (i.e. you iphone) or you can export it to send or whatever!!
antholio, thanks for the hint!
I actually find a free PDF viewer that does wonders: PDF XChange Viewer (for Windows, light and exports to JPEG and you can name using macros). Case close.