How to Convert a PDF to JPG or PNG on Mac

A slide you want to drop into a doc, a form someone insists on receiving "as a picture," a diagram for a web page — Preview converts PDF pages to JPG or PNG without any extra software. The one catch: it exports a page at a time, so multi-page documents need the Automator trick below.

Export a page from Preview

1. Open the PDF in Preview and scroll to the page you want — export converts the currently displayed page.
2. Choose File → Export…
3. Open the Format menu and pick JPEG, PNG, or HEIF. (Holding Option while clicking the menu reveals additional formats like TIFF.)
4. Set the Resolution in DPI, and for JPEG a Quality slider appears too.
5. Name the file and click Save.

The original PDF is untouched — export always writes a new file.

Pick the right format and resolution

• PNG — the default choice for pages with text, line art, or diagrams. It's lossless, so letters stay crisp instead of growing JPEG fuzz around the edges.
• JPEG — better for photo-heavy pages where file size matters; set quality around the top third of the slider.
• Resolution: a PDF page has no fixed pixel size, so DPI decides how big the image comes out. At 150 DPI a letter-size page becomes roughly 1275 pixels wide — fine for screens and chat. Use 300 DPI when the image will be printed or zoomed, and don't go higher without a reason; file size grows with the square of the DPI.

If text looks slightly soft in the result, that's the nature of rasterizing — re-export at higher DPI rather than upscaling the image later.

Convert every page at once (Automator)

Preview won't loop a 30-page PDF for you, but Automator — preinstalled on every Mac — will:

1. Open Automator (find it with Spotlight) and create a new Workflow.
2. Add the action Ask for Finder Items (set to files), then Render PDF Pages as Images — set the format, resolution, and compression there.
3. Add Move Finder Items and choose a destination folder.
4. Press Run, pick your PDF, and every page lands in the folder as a numbered image.

Save the workflow and it's a reusable converter; save it as a Quick Action instead and it appears in Finder's right-click menu. The same Render PDF Pages as Images action is the honest answer whenever "export the current page" isn't enough.

The reverse trip, and screenshots

Going the other way — images into a PDF — is a Finder right-click: see combining images into one PDF. And if what you actually need is a picture of part of a page (one chart, one paragraph), skip conversion entirely: Shift + Cmd + 4 screenshots the region straight to a PNG on your desktop at your display's resolution.

There's a cleaner variant of that trick inside Preview itself. Drag a rectangular selection around the part of the PDF page you want, press Cmd + C, then choose File → New from Clipboard — Preview opens the copied region as a brand-new image, ready to export in any format. Because it comes from the PDF's own rendering rather than your screen, it's not limited by your display size, and there's no desktop clutter to clean up afterward.

Whichever route you take, mind what conversion throws away: an image of a page has no selectable text, no working links, and no vector sharpness at high zoom. Convert pages that will be looked at — slides, diagrams, forms-as-pictures — and keep the PDF itself for anything people will read, search, or print at quality. When both needs exist, ship both files; they came from the same source and cost nothing extra to make.