How to turn photos of a document into one PDF

A form to return, a stack of receipts, pages of handwritten notes: you photograph them, and now someone wants “one PDF, please”. It takes a minute, and the photos don’t have to go through anyone’s server.

Updated

Take photos that will read well

The PDF can only be as good as the photos. A little care here saves retaking them:

  • Put the page on a darker, plain surface, in daylight or even room light, with no shadow of your hand or phone across it.
  • Hold the phone straight above the page, not at an angle, and fill the frame with the page.
  • One page per photo, in reading order, so you don’t have to sort them later.
  • Check that the smallest print is sharp before you move on.

Make the PDF

Open Images to PDF and choose the photos, or drop them on the page. Each becomes a page; drag them if the order is wrong.

Choose the page size. A4 or Letter with a small margin suits documents that will be printed; “same as the image” gives pages exactly the shape of each photo, which suits receipts and screenshots. Then press Make PDF and download the file.

Photos are turned upright, and very large ones are scaled down so the PDF stays easy to send. Nothing is uploaded: the PDF is built in your browser.

Tidy the result

If something isn’t right afterwards, you don’t have to start again:

  • A page is sideways or in the wrong place: Organize pages rotates, reorders and removes pages.
  • Too much table around the paper: Crop pages trims the edges.
  • You photographed the second half later: make a second PDF and join the two with Merge PDFs.

What a photo PDF can’t do

Its pages are pictures. You can’t select, copy or search the text in them, and screen readers can’t read them. Recognising the text (OCR) is what makes a scan searchable; on this site that isn’t available, but the PDF Case app for iPhone and iPad does it, and can scan with the camera directly.

Photo PDFs are also large. If the file is too big to email, send fewer pages per file, or compress it in the iOS app.

Tools for this

Files are processed on this device and never uploaded.

Questions

Can I combine JPG and PNG images in one PDF?
Yes. Choose them together; each image becomes one page, in the order you set.
Do my photos get uploaded?
No. The PDF is made by code in your browser, on your device.
Why can’t I search the text in my PDF?
Because the pages are photos. The text has to be recognised first (OCR), which this site doesn’t do; the PDF Case iOS app does.
Can I use photos straight from my iPhone?
Yes. In Safari, iPhone photos in HEIC format work as they are. In other browsers, use JPG or PNG.

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