Photographing documents so they look good as a PDF
- Shoot from directly above the page, not at an angle, so the edges stay straight.
- Use daylight or a lamp beside you. Your own shadow across the page is the most common problem.
- Fill the frame with the paper and keep the phone steady; a sharp photo matters more than a high-resolution one.
- Put a dark surface under white paper so the edges are easy to see.
- Photos taken sideways are fine: the tool reads the rotation your phone recorded, and you can rotate any page before converting.
Page size, orientation and margins
A4 (210 × 297 mm) is the standard in most of the world; Letter (8.5 × 11 in) is used in the US and Canada. Each image is scaled to fit its page without cropping and centred. With Auto orientation, landscape images get landscape pages.
Same as image makes each page the shape of its image, with no white bars, which suits screenshots and mixed sizes.
Keeping the PDF a reasonable size
With Original quality, JPG photos are embedded exactly as they are, so nothing is recompressed and the PDF is about as large as the photos together. Modern phone photos are often 3 to 6 MB each, so a ten-page PDF can reach 30 MB or more.
Smaller file shrinks each image to at most 2000 pixels on its longest side and saves it as a JPEG at 75% quality. That is plenty for reading on a screen and for printing on A4 or Letter at a normal size, and it usually cuts the file by a large factor.
Questions
How many images can I combine?
There is no fixed limit. The practical limit is your device's memory, so for very large batches choose Smaller file or split the job in two.
How do I change the page order?
Drag a page by its grip handle, or use the earlier and later arrow buttons under each page, which also work with a keyboard.
Can I combine images with an existing PDF?
Not here: this tool combines images. To join PDFs together, use a PDF merge tool.
Are my files uploaded anywhere?
No. The conversion runs in your browser and the page is not allowed to connect to other servers, so your files never leave your device.