How to Turn Photos of Documents into One PDF (Phone or Computer)

1. Take photos that read well

• Lay the page flat on a dark, plain surface so its edges stand out.
• Use daylight or even room light and avoid your own shadow; turn the flash off if it causes glare.
• Hold the phone parallel to the page and fill the frame with it.
• Check each photo is sharp before you move on — zoom in on small print.

Many phones also have a document scanner built in (for example in the iPhone Notes and Files apps, or in Google Drive on Android) that crops and flattens pages automatically. If you've already got plain photos, the steps below turn them into a tidy PDF.

2. Convert the photos to one PDF

1. Open JPG to PDF on your phone or computer.
2. Choose the photos, or drag them onto the page.
3. Put them in order. Phone photos are shown the right way up using the orientation your camera recorded.
4. Choose a page size: A4 (or Letter) for anything that may be printed or uploaded to a form, or Fit to image to keep each photo's own shape.
5. Select Convert to PDF and download it.

JPG and PNG photos are placed in the PDF without re-compression, so they keep their original quality. WebP images are converted in your browser first, because PDF can't store WebP.

iPhone photos and HEIC

iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. When you choose photos from your library on a web page, iOS usually hands them over as JPG, so they work as normal. On a computer, HEIC files need to be saved or exported as JPG first. To make your iPhone take JPGs instead, go to Settings → Camera → Formats and choose Most Compatible.

3. Make it small enough to email or upload

Phone photos are often several megabytes each, so a PDF of ten pages can easily be too large for an email attachment or an upload form. Compress PDF shows the real size before and after:

• Strong compression re-renders each page as a compressed image. For a PDF made from photos it usually makes the biggest difference — and since the pages are already images, you lose little.
• Lossless optimisation keeps everything exactly as it is and often saves little on photo PDFs.

Taking photos at a lower resolution in the first place also helps, as long as small print stays readable.

4. Fix the order or make it searchable

• Pages in the wrong order, sideways or one too many? Organise PDF lets you drag pages, rotate them and delete the extras — free.
• Need to search or copy the text later — for example receipts for your tax records? OCR PDF adds an invisible text layer to the pages (Business plan).

Questions