Many online procedures ask for “a single PDF” when all you have are phone photos: proof of address, a prescription, handwritten homework, a receipt. Turning those images into a tidy document takes a few minutes, provided you master three things: page order, photo sharpness and final weight.
Choosing the tool for your starting point
| You have | Tool | Particularity |
|---|---|---|
| JPG photos | JPG to PDF | JPEGs are inserted as they are, with no new compression: no loss of quality. |
Creating the PDF step by step
- Gather your images and rename them if needed in the order you want. On a phone, shoot sheets upright and flat.
- Drop them into JPG to PDF: each image becomes a page. Reorder with the arrows or by dragging the rows.
- Use the rotate button to straighten a page laid sideways. The orientation of phone photos is respected automatically.
- Choose the page size (A4, Letter or the exact image size), orientation, margins and fit: each row's thumbnail shows the final page.
- Create the PDF, download it and flip through it before sending.
A PNG, WebP, BMP or GIF dropped in by mistake is accepted: the browser converts it before inserting it.
The weight trap
Since JPEGs are inserted without recompression, the PDF weighs about as much as your photos. A 12-megapixel phone photo (4,000 × 3,000 pixels) commonly weighs 3 to 5 MB: ten photos make 30 to 50 MB, too much for an attachment or for most administrative forms.
For an A4 page that is far more than needed. Placed on a portrait A4 page, a photo 3,000 pixels wide reaches about 360 dots per inch (3,000 ÷ 8.27 inches), whereas 150 to 200 ppi is enough to read printed text (at 200 ppi an A4 page is about 1,654 × 2,339 pixels). The most effective fix: shrink the photos before converting, with Compress Image (see Shrink an image's file size with no visible loss), or compress the final PDF (see How to compress a PDF without ruining it).
Practical tips
- A consistent page size. “Image size” respects each photo's proportions but gives pages of different sizes; A4 or Letter gives a uniform document.
- Frame wide, then crop. Trim before converting with Crop Image to remove table edges.
- Need searchable text? A PDF made of photos is only a series of images. Run it through OCR PDF afterwards to be able to search and copy text (see Extract text from an image or scanned PDF (OCR): a practical guide).
- Check the pages. Make sure no page is cut off, blurry or upside down.
Common mistakes
- Sending photos of 4 MB each without shrinking them, then getting a “file too large” message.
- Forgetting the order: photos are taken in one order, but the file asks for another.
- Photographing a document at an angle or under a lamp that causes glare, then being unable to read anything.
- Converting a screenshot of text to JPG: faint halos appear around letters. Keep the PNG.
Honest limits
- A PNG of several tens of megapixels needs a lot of memory: on a phone, process them in small batches.
- The result is not a certified “true” scan: if an agency requires a specific kind of digitised document, check its rules.
- The text in a photo is not selectable until you run text recognition, which is never perfect.
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos recompressed in the PDF?
Not JPGs: they are copied as they are, losslessly. Hence the value of shrinking them beforehand if the total is too heavy.
Which page size should I choose?
A4 in most countries, Letter in North America. “Image size” is fine if you do not need to print.
How do I put several photos in one PDF?
Drop them together: each image becomes a page, in the order of the list, which you can change.
Can I add a photo to an existing PDF?
Convert the photo to a PDF, then merge it with the other using Merge PDF.
Are my images sent anywhere?
No. Conversion happens in your browser; nothing is transmitted or kept.