How to make a PDF from pictures
- Add your pictures. Drop them anywhere on the page, paste one, or click the box to choose files. Each picture becomes one page.
- Put the pages in order. Use the ▲ and ▼ buttons to move a picture up or down, and ✕ to take one out. The number on the left is the page number.
- Choose how the pages look: page size, direction, margin and picture quality (all explained below).
- Press Create PDF. The file is saved by your browser. With one picture it is named after that picture, for example
receipt.pdf, and with several it is calledpictures.pdf.
You can add more pictures at any time with Add more pictures. When you add several at once, for example by dropping a folder, they are sorted by file name with numbers in their natural order, so page2 comes before page10. Pictures you add later go to the end of the list, and you can move them from there.
Page size, direction and margin
| Setting | Choices | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Page size | A4, US Letter, or the same as the picture | A4 is 210 × 297 mm and US Letter is 8.5 × 11 inches. Each picture is made as large as fits on the page, in its own shape, and centered. Nothing is stretched or cut off. Same as the picture makes each page exactly the shape of its picture, so there are no white borders unless you add a margin. |
| Page direction | Automatic, always portrait, always landscape | Automatic turns the page sideways for a picture that is wider than it is tall, so landscape pictures use the whole page. Pages in one PDF can therefore differ. It is not shown for Same as the picture, where the page already follows the picture. |
| Margin | None, small (10 mm), large (20 mm) | White space kept free on every side of the picture. |
A picture smaller than the page is scaled up to fill it, which cannot add detail, so a small picture can look soft on an A4 page. For those, Same as the picture keeps the page small. That option sizes a page at 0.75 points per pixel, which is the size the picture would have on a 96-pixels-per-inch screen, and it caps the longest side of a page at about 69 inches so that PDF viewers still cope.
Picture quality and file size
PDF can store a JPEG picture as it is, so each page holds your picture saved as a JPEG. Every picture is drawn fresh and saved again at one of three settings:
| Setting | Longest side kept at | JPEG quality | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| High (the default) | The picture's own size, up to 8000 pixels | 92 | Photos and anything you will print or zoom into. Biggest file. |
| Medium | Up to 2000 pixels | 85 | Reading on a screen and most uploads. |
| Small | Up to 1200 pixels | 75 | Email and forms with a size limit. |
The PDF is about as large as all of its pictures put together, so a phone photo of 3 MB adds roughly that much, and the size shown after saving tells you the real number. If a PDF is too big for a form, choose Small, or shrink the pictures first with the image resizer or the image compressor and then make the PDF.
What happens to each picture
- Phone photos stay upright. The rotation tag in a phone photo is applied before it is placed, so the page looks the way the picture does in a normal viewer. A picture that is simply sideways, such as a page photographed the wrong way round, is not turned for you: fix it first with the rotate tool.
- See-through areas become white. JPEG cannot be transparent, so a PNG with a transparent background is placed on white.
- Sharp text can look slightly fuzzy. Screenshots and scans of text are saved as JPEG, which handles edges less well than PNG. At High it is usually hard to see. If it matters, that is a limit of this tool: it saves every page as a JPEG.
- GIF and WebP files are opened by your browser. An animated GIF contributes only its first frame.
- iPhone HEIC photos work too. Safari opens them itself. In other browsers the page downloads a decoder of about 3 MB the first time you add one, and not otherwise. The image converter page explains it in more detail.
What the PDF is, and is not
- It is a plain PDF that any viewer opens: browsers, Preview on Mac, Adobe Reader, phones. Each page holds one picture.
- It has no selectable text. The pages are pictures, so you cannot search or copy words from a photographed document. There is no text recognition (OCR) in this tool.
- It carries no metadata from your pictures. Camera details and the GPS location in the originals are not copied, and the PDF has no title or author set. See our EXIF guide and the guide to removing location from photos.
- It has no password and no page editing. The tool only puts pictures on pages.
Common uses
- Documents photographed with a phone: receipts, forms, homework pages and signed pages, combined into one file in the right order. Photograph in good light and from straight above, and use Small or Medium if the form has a size limit.
- Portfolios and contact sheets: artwork or photographs, one per page, with a margin.
- Reference packs: a character sheet or a set of references in one file to send or print.
- Printing: choose A4 or US Letter with a small margin and the PDF prints at the right shape.
Limits to know about
- Browsers will not draw a picture larger than about 120 megapixels, so a huge picture may fail. The tool tells you which one.
- All the pictures are worked on in memory, then the PDF is built. A few hundred large photos at once may be too many for a phone, so split a very large set into several PDFs.
- Pictures larger than 8000 pixels on the longest side are scaled down to that, even at High.
Privacy
The PDF is built inside this tab, and the files on your disk are never changed or deleted. For what the site collects, see our privacy policy.
Frequently asked questions
How do I combine several pictures into one PDF?
Add all the pictures at once, check the page order in the list (use ▲ and ▼ to change it), and press Create PDF. Each picture becomes one page, in the order shown.
How do I change the order of the pages?
Use the ▲ and ▼ buttons on each row. The number on the left is the page number. Pictures added together are sorted by file name to begin with, so naming files 1, 2, 3 is the easy way to get the order you want.
Why is my PDF so big?
The PDF holds your pictures, so it is about their combined size. Choose Medium or Small under Picture quality to keep fewer pixels, or reduce the pictures first with the image resizer or compressor.
Can I make the page the same size as the picture?
Yes. Choose Same as the picture (no white borders) under Page size. Each page then takes the shape of its picture. Add a margin if you want a white border.
Can I search or copy the text in the PDF?
No. The pages are pictures, so a photographed document has no selectable text. This tool does not do text recognition.
Does it work with iPhone HEIC photos?
Yes. Safari opens HEIC itself. Other browsers download a small decoder of about 3 MB the first time you add a HEIC photo, and then it works the same way.