Last checked by the TextEditor.com team
How to turn pictures into a PDF
- Add the picturesDrop them on the box or click to choose several at once. Each one becomes a page.
- Set the order and the pageDrag pictures into order, turn the sideways ones, pick A4 or Letter and a margin.
- DownloadOne PDF named after the first picture. Or tick the ZIP option for one file per picture.
Many forms and job portals take one PDF but not five photos. A scan of an ID card, a signed page from the phone camera, a receipt and a screenshot can all go in the same file, each on its own page, in the order you choose.
JPEG or PNG inside the PDF
A PDF can hold a picture in its original form. A JPEG photo goes in as it is, with no second loss of quality, and the file stays about as big as the photo. A PNG is lossless and also goes in untouched, which is right for screenshots, drawings and scans of text, where JPEG would blur the edges of the letters.
WebP, GIF and BMP are not PDF formats. They are decoded and stored again, as PNG when you want them lossless, or as JPEG when "Shrink big photos" is on. That option also scales photos down to 2500 pixels on the longest side and saves them at JPEG quality 85, which usually cuts a 12 megapixel photo from 4 MB to under 1 MB with no visible change on an A4 page. The estimate next to the Download button shows the size before you download.
Resolution: pixels become dots per inch
A picture has pixels, a page has inches. Put a 3000 by 4000 pixel photo on an A4 page with no margin and it prints at about 363 dpi, more than enough: print shops ask for 300. The same photo on a small label would be sharper still, and a 800 by 600 screenshot stretched over a whole page drops to about 70 dpi and looks soft. Type your own picture size to see what you get.
A 3000 by 4000 pixel picture fills an A4 page with no margin at about 342 dpi. It prints 210 by 280 mm.
The picture is fitted inside the page, so the larger of the two dpi values counts.
Why a phone photo can come out sideways
A phone saves the photo the way the sensor saw it and adds a note in the EXIF data that says "turn this 90 degrees". Photo apps read the note and show the picture upright. A PDF reader does not, so a photo copied in as it is would lie on its side. This page reads the note and turns the pixels before they go in. The thumbnails show the result, and you can still turn any picture by hand with the small arrows.
Page sizes
| Page | Millimeters | Inches | Points in the PDF | Used in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A4 | 210 by 297 | 8.27 by 11.69 | 595 by 842 | Most of the world |
| Letter | 216 by 279 | 8.5 by 11 | 612 by 792 | United States, Canada, Mexico |
| Legal | 216 by 356 | 8.5 by 14 | 612 by 1008 | United States, for contracts |
| Fit to picture | The page gets the shape of the picture, with the long side 297 mm | Screens, no white edges | ||
A point is 1/72 of an inch, so an A4 page is 595 by 842 points inside the file. The A series comes from ISO 216: each size is half of the one before it, and the sides always keep the ratio 1 to the square root of 2. Letter is older and only common in North America.
Scanning a paper with a phone
Lay the paper flat on a dark table, so the edges are easy to see. Stand right above it, in daylight, and keep your shadow off the page. The camera app on most phones has a document mode that straightens the page and whitens the paper: on an iPhone open Notes and tap the camera, on Android open Google Drive and tap the plus sign, then Scan. Both save a PDF on their own. If you only have photos, drop them here and pick Letter or A4 with no margin.
More PDF tools
Join the result with other files in merge PDF files, or cut a long one in split a PDF. Fix a sideways page in rotate PDF pages. A scanned page has no text to copy, so PDF to text finds nothing in it; it works on files made from a text document. For text, white out and signatures, open the PDF editor.