are there any free programs that can do this conversion nicely?

Convert Adobe PDF to JPEG Image: http://tinyurl.com/gjb95

Many more availabilities on a Google search.

Sorry, above is trial, purchase for full program. But here's something you can do using your graphics card:
http://www.go2pdf.com/jpg-to-pdf.html.

This looks like the best of the lot. It's shareware and the site is good:
http://www.tucows.com/preview/504757?id=504757

Most of the others are free download, but pay to run full program.

thanks for the links, I'll check them out

Well the third one is shareware and the 2nd one is for turning a jpeg into a pdf

Well, I did get one backwards. Sorry. As for the Shareware, I looked at multiple sites and other than Convert Adobe PDF to JPEG Image: http://tinyurl.com/gjb95
I didn't find any freebies out there.

Please explore any of the dozens of sites on a search using PDF to JPEG as your search term.