When a PDF is better than a pile of photos
Many forms, schools and offices ask for a single PDF: a scanned ID, proof of address, a signed contract, receipts for an expense claim or the pages of a handwritten assignment. Sending ten separate photos is messy, they arrive in random order, and some upload forms accept only one file. Image to PDF puts your photos into one document, one image per page, in the order you choose.
PDFs also look the same everywhere. A photo can open sideways or cropped in different apps, while a PDF page stays exactly as you made it, on a phone, a laptop or a printer.
Which page size should I choose?
Same as image makes every page exactly the shape of its photo, with no white border. It's the best choice for screenshots, artwork and anything that will be read on a screen.
A4 places each image on a standard A4 sheet (210 × 297 mm) with a small margin, turned to landscape automatically for wide images. Use it for anything that might be printed or that an office expects to look like a document. Small images aren't stretched to fill the page, so they stay sharp.
Quality and file size
Photos are placed at their full resolution. JPEGs and other photos are saved at high JPEG quality, so text in scans stays crisp. PNGs, such as screenshots and graphics, are kept as PNG, so they're lossless and keep their transparency.
The PDF is roughly the size of the images you put in. A modern phone photo is 2 to 5 MB, so a 10-page PDF of phone photos is often 20 to 40 MB, which is too big for many email services and upload forms. If you need it smaller, shrink the photos first with Image Compressor or Image Resizer. A 1600-pixel-wide photo still reads perfectly as a document page and is a fraction of the size.
Photos from an iPhone
iPhones save photos as HEIC. When you choose photos from your library in Safari, iOS converts them to JPEG automatically, so they work here without any extra step. On a Windows PC or in Chrome on a Mac, HEIC files copied from an iPhone may not open; convert them with HEIC to JPG first.
Photos taken in portrait or landscape keep the orientation you see in your gallery, because the image is read the same way your phone displays it.
How do I photograph documents so they scan cleanly?
Better photos make a far better PDF:
- Shoot in daylight or under a bright, even light, and avoid your own shadow over the page.
- Hold the phone directly above the page, so the page is a rectangle, not a trapezoid.
- Fill the frame with the page, and put it on a dark surface so its edges stand out.
- For many pages, the scanner in the iPhone Notes app or Google Drive's Scan button crops and straightens automatically. Save those as images and combine them here.
Which image formats can I convert to PDF?
Any image your browser can open works: JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and BMP on every browser, plus AVIF on most current ones. Animated GIFs become one page showing the first frame. HEIC (iPhone photos) works in Safari and needs converting first elsewhere, as described above.
How do I change the page order?
Images go into the PDF in the order shown in the list, top to bottom. Use the arrows to move a page up or down and the cross to remove one. You can keep adding images after the first batch; new ones go to the end of the list. Changing the order, the page size or the list clears the finished PDF, so press Create PDF again before downloading.
The file downloads as images.pdf. Rename it to something descriptive, such as passport-scan.pdf or receipts-march.pdf, before you send it. Offices and upload forms often reject vague file names, and you'll find it again more easily.
Private by design
The PDF is built by JavaScript in your browser. Your images are never uploaded to download.fan or anyone else, which matters for passports, bank letters and medical documents. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works.