Practical guide 3 min read
How to turn photos into one PDF
Combine phone photos, scans and screenshots into a single PDF, in the right order, at a page size that prints properly.
When one PDF beats a pile of photos
Receipts for an expense claim, the pages of a signed lease, handwritten notes, ID documents for an application: when you have photographed several pages, most people would rather receive one PDF than a dozen separate images. A single file keeps the pages in order, prints properly and uploads in one go.
Open JPG to PDF. Despite the name, it also accepts PNG, WebP and HEIC images, so you can mix phone photos and screenshots. It is free and needs no account.
Turn photos into a PDF, step by step
- Choose or drop your images. Each image becomes one page.
- Drag the pages into the right order. Check the first and last pages especially.
- Choose a Page size. Same as the image makes each page the size of its photo. A4, US Letter, US Legal, A3 and A5 give standard paper pages.
- If you picked a paper size, choose the Orientation. Auto turns each page to suit its photo. Portrait or Landscape makes every page the same way round.
- Choose a Margin: None, Small or Large.
- Select Convert to PDF, download the file and page through it before sending it.
Which page size to choose
Use Same as the image when the PDF will only be read on screen. There are no borders, and every photo fills its page.
Choose a paper size when the PDF might be printed, or when a form expects standard pages. US Letter is the norm in the United States and Canada; A4 is standard almost everywhere else. With a paper size, add a Small margin so printers don't clip the edges.
Sideways photos and image quality
Phones often store a photo sideways, with a note in the file saying which way is up. Some converters ignore that note and produce sideways pages. This one reads it, so each photo appears upright.
JPG and PNG images are placed into the PDF untouched, with no re-compression and no loss of quality. That also means the PDF is roughly as large as the photos added together.
If the finished PDF is too large to email or upload, shrink the photos before converting them. Resize Image can bring phone photos down to around 2000 pixels wide, which is still sharp on a printed page. Compress Image reduces the file size further. Then convert the smaller copies.
iPhone photos (HEIC)
iPhones save photos in HEIC format, which many computers and websites won't open. JPG to PDF takes them as they are. Most browsers can't read HEIC themselves, so each photo takes a second or two to decode on your device.
Tips for photographing documents
- Lay the page flat on a dark, plain surface, in good even light. Avoid the shadow of your phone.
- Hold the phone directly above the page, not at an angle, so text lines stay straight.
- Crop away the table around the page with Crop Image before converting.
- Text in a photo is a picture of text. It looks right in the PDF, but it can't be searched or copied.
Adding the pages to an existing PDF
To put your photos into a document you already have, convert them first, then combine the two files with Merge PDF. To insert pages at a particular point, use Add Pages to PDF. The guide to merging PDFs explains how to check the result.
Where your photos are processed
Your images are converted in your browser and are not uploaded to a LabAnvil server, which matters for IDs, bank statements and other personal documents. The privacy policy covers analytics and advertising on the website itself.