How to turn photos and scans into one PDF
By the fullpdftools team · Updated
Quick answer: open Image to PDF, add all your photos (JPG, PNG, WebP and more), drag them into the right order, choose a page size (A4, US Letter, or Same as image) and click Create PDF. For documents, photograph each page flat, in daylight, from directly above. If the PDF is too big, run it through Compress PDF.
Phones have replaced scanners for most people. Receipts, ID cards, signed forms, homework and handwritten notes all start life as photos, but schools, employers and government portals usually want one PDF. Getting from a camera roll to a clean, readable, reasonably small PDF takes a few minutes if you know what to watch for.
Take photos that read well as pages
- Shoot straight down. Hold the phone parallel to the page. Shooting at an angle turns the page into a trapezoid and makes text at the far edge smaller.
- Use even light. Daylight near a window is ideal. Avoid the flash, which leaves a bright glare spot, and avoid your own shadow falling across the page.
- Fill the frame. Get close enough that the page fills most of the photo, with a thin border of background around it.
- Use a dark, plain background for white paper. The contrast makes edges obvious and looks tidier in the PDF.
- Check focus on the smallest text before moving to the next page. Tap the screen on the text to focus.
Many phones also have a built-in document scanner (in the Notes or Files app on iPhone, and in Google Drive or the camera app on many Android phones) that straightens and crops pages automatically. If you use one, export the scans as images or PDF, then combine them with the steps below.
Combine the photos into one PDF
- Open Image to PDF and select or drop all the images. Images are processed in your browser and not uploaded.
- Drag the image cards into the order the pages should appear. Page 1 goes first.
- Pick a page size and orientation (see below) and, if you like, a margin.
- Click Create PDF and download the file.
Portrait phone photos come out the right way up: the tool reads the orientation information the camera stores in the photo, so you don’t need to rotate them first.
Choosing a page size
| Option | What happens | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| A4 | Every image is fitted onto an A4 page (210 × 297 mm) | Documents for the UK, Europe, Asia, Africa and most of the world; anything that may be printed |
| US Letter | Every image is fitted onto a Letter page (8.5 × 11 in) | Documents for the US, Canada and some Latin American countries |
| Same as image | Each page takes the exact proportions of its photo | Photo albums, screenshots, receipts and other odd shapes where white borders would look wrong |
Automatic orientation turns each page landscape or portrait to match its image, which avoids sideways photos on mixed sets. Set it to Portrait if the recipient expects every page upright.
Keep the PDF small enough to send
A modern phone photo is often 3–6 MB, so a ten-page PDF built from originals can easily reach 40 MB, more than most email and upload limits allow. Three ways to shrink it:
- Compress the finished PDF with Compress PDF. Recommended usually brings a photo-based PDF down dramatically while keeping text readable.
- Send smaller photos. Messaging apps that resize photos, or your phone’s “medium” export size, produce images that are still sharp enough for documents.
- Crop out the background in your photo app before converting, so pixels aren’t wasted on the table top.
For more detail, read how to reduce PDF file size and our checklist for meeting upload portal requirements.
Common problems and fixes
- A page is sideways in the PDF. Fix it afterwards with Rotate PDF; the rotation is saved permanently.
- HEIC photos from an iPhone won’t load. HEIC only opens in browsers that support it, such as Safari. Elsewhere, set the iPhone camera to Most Compatible (Settings → Camera → Formats) so new photos are saved as JPG, or share the photos, which usually converts them to JPG.
- The PDF looks grey and dull. Boost brightness and contrast in your photo app before converting; a white page should look white.
- You need to add one more page later. Make a PDF of the new page and combine both with Merge PDF.
Frequently asked questions
How do I combine multiple photos into one PDF?
Add all the photos to Image to PDF at once, drag them into order and click Create PDF. Each photo becomes one page of the same document.
Which image formats can I convert to PDF?
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF, plus HEIC in browsers that can display it, such as Safari.
Does converting a photo to PDF reduce its quality?
No. The image is placed into the PDF as it is. Quality only drops if you compress the PDF afterwards, and you choose how much.
Can I make the text in a photo searchable?
Not with this tool. That needs OCR (optical character recognition) software. The PDF will look like the photos, but the words are part of the image.
Should I use A4 or Letter?
Use the paper size of the country that will read or print the document: Letter for the US and Canada, A4 almost everywhere else.
Tools used in this guide
Compress PDF
Reduce PDF file size for email and uploads while keeping it readable.
Image to PDF
Turn JPG, PNG, WebP and other images into a single PDF.