JPG is the right choice for photographic Illustrator artwork and the wrong one for a logo. Most converters do not tell you which you have — they upload the file, flatten it, and return a picture. This one opens the artwork first, so you can see what you are exporting.
Why an .ai file opens here without Illustrator
Since Illustrator 9, every .aifile has stored a complete PDF representation of the artwork alongside Illustrator's own data, under the default “Create PDF Compatible File” option. That is why a genuine .ai file begins with the bytes %PDF-1.5. The same parser this site uses for PDFs reads it directly.
Resolution comes from vectors, not from upscaling
Rasterisation happens at export time, from live vector data. Set a bigger canvas before you export and the artwork is drawn again at that size, so lines and type stay crisp. A converter that flattens on upload cannot offer this: once the vectors are gone, enlarging the result only interpolates pixels.
Where JPG costs you quality
JPEG compression works by discarding detail the eye is unlikely to miss in a photograph. Hard edges are exactly what it handles worst, so a crisp black logo on white picks up faint grey speckle around every edge. It also has no alpha channel, so transparency becomes a solid fill.
For logos, icons, and type-led artwork, use the AI to PNG converter for a lossless raster, or the AI to SVG converter to stay vector entirely.
Fix the artwork before you flatten it
Once the file parses, every object is still separate and editable. Correct the wording, swap a colour, remove a stray element, or delete an artboard you do not need — then export. The JPG is rendered from what is on screen, which is the one thing a plain converter can never do.
The same conversion in code
This page is built on the public SDK. Because .ai is a PDF container, the importer needs no special case:
import { pdfToJson } from "@polotno/pdf-import";
import { createStore } from "polotno/model/store";
// An .ai file is a PDF container - pass the bytes straight in.
const buffer = await file.arrayBuffer();
const json = await pdfToJson({ pdf: buffer });
const store = createStore({ key: "YOUR_KEY" });
store.loadJSON(json);
await store.waitLoading();
// 2x the artboard size, rendered from vector data
const dataUrl = await store.toDataURL({
pageId: store.pages[0].id,
mimeType: "image/jpeg",
pixelRatio: 2,
});Full API reference: PDF Import and the Import & Export overview.
