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I use OS X, and I'm able to simply save a PDF as a JPG in Preview, but find that the resolution goes down a lot when I do so. What's the best way to convert PDF to JPG without sacrificing image resolution?

You are somewhat confused in that PDFs don't naturally have a resolution, and when you export the JPEG image from Preview, you specify a target resolution -- so the image resolution, by definition, can never go down. I suspect that you are complaining about the quality of the image the you get when exporting from Preview. There are two parameters that Preview allows you to set when exporting a PDF to JPEG. resolution and quality. Quality is a factor given over to the JPEG image compression algorithm and controls how accurately you want the picture to reflect the original. At the "Best" setting, you get minimal compression artifacts and blurring. If you set quality to the "Least" value, then you get an image that takes up very little disk space, but tends to be blurry with dulled colors, and obvious compression artifacts. Resolution defines how many pixels will be used to draw the output image. PDF documents have dimensions, such as 8.5" x 11" that defines the size of the image as it is intended to be show or printed. Since PDFs are mostly composed of vector graphics and text, the PDF has no native resolution. It's printed or drawn at whatever is native to the device. JPEG images, however, are sized in pixels (picture elements; the little colored squares that make up the image). In Preview, you specify the "resolution" of the JPEG in the export dialog by setting a number in the "Resolution" option, typically in "pixels/inch". 300 pixels per inch is the standard size for commercial printing. If you had an 8.5" x 11" page and saved it at 300 pixels per inch, you'd have a picture suitable for printing at 8.5" x 11" and it would be 2550x3300 pixels (8.4 megapixels). If you wanted to print the picture at 2x the size, you might select 600 pixles/inch, which would give you a 5100x6600 (33.7 megapixel) image suitable for printing at 17" x 22". OS X Preview does a fantastic job at rendering PDFs as JPEGs, provided that you set the JPEG quality and resolution parameters to something that meets your needs.

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Convert PDF: All You Need to Know

However, if you don't want Preview to compress the images, you can choose to not compress PDF images at all in the ‥Preferences‥ menu to create a PDF image that still has all the features Preview has to offer but that it's not compressed. To get this, go to the ‥Preferences‥ menu, click ‥Advanced‥, click PDF Image, select …PDF JPEG-Compressed‣ under ‥Output images, then uncheck JPEG Export on the export images dialog that will pop up. You can now print to any printer with a PDF-capable printer driver. (I have no idea how to save your output as a .png file, so you can print it at normal sizes.) 3.3.2 Can I use “My Documents” in the Finder to read my PDFs? No. You'll need to open the PDF with Preview every time. The reason is that Apple limits the number of documents you can.