How to turn photos into a single PDF (receipts, IDs, homework)

To turn photos into a PDF, put the pictures in the order you want and place each one on its own page at a fixed page size — A4, US Letter or the size of the image itself. Administrations, schools and expense systems almost always ask for one PDF rather than ten separate photos, and a single file also survives forwarding better.

The quickest route here: open JPG to PDF, drop the pictures (JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP or SVG), reorder them with the arrows, choose page size, orientation and margin, then click Create PDF. Nothing is uploaded: the conversion runs on your own device, which matters when the photos show an ID card, a payslip or a medical document.

The ways to do it, and when each one makes sense

Method	Good for	Watch out for
A browser tool like this one	Any device, control over page size, order and margins	Very large batches depend on your device's memory
Built-in OS features	One quick job with pictures already on the machine	Little control over page size and margins
A phone scanner feature	Paper documents photographed on the spot	Output quality depends on light and on holding the phone flat

On Windows, select the images in File Explorer, right-click and choose Print; in the Print Pictures dialog, set the printer to "Microsoft Print to PDF" and the layout to "Full page photo". That produces one PDF containing all the selected pictures. On macOS, select the images in the Finder, right-click and use Quick Actions → Create PDF; Preview can do the same through File → Print → PDF → Save as PDF. On iPhone, pictures already stored in the Files app can be selected, long-pressed and turned into a PDF with Create PDF, and paper documents can be captured straight to a multi-page PDF with Scan Documents in the Files app or in Notes. On Android, behaviour depends on the manufacturer's gallery; the Google Drive app's Scan function saves a multi-page PDF.

Before converting: crop, straighten, rotate

• Fill the frame with the document and shoot from directly above, on a dark, contrasting surface. Daylight beats the flash, which leaves a bright patch in the middle of the page.
• Crop the background away with Crop image. A receipt photographed on a table becomes a page of table otherwise, and the readable part shrinks.
• Fix quarter turns with Rotate image, which writes the rotation into the pixels, so it survives in apps that ignore the orientation tag.
• Name files so they sort themselves — 01-front.jpg, 02-back.jpg. Most file pickers add them in name order, which saves reordering afterwards.

Page size, orientation and margins

Page size. A4 (Europe, Africa and most of the world) or US Letter give a document that prints on a standard sheet — this is what online forms expect. "Same as image" makes each page exactly the size of its picture, treating the image at 96 DPI, which is right for screenshots and portfolios but produces odd dimensions when printed.

Orientation. "Automatic" puts landscape pictures on landscape pages and portrait pictures on portrait pages, so nothing is left with large empty bands.

Margin. "Small" is 20 points, about 7 mm; "Large" is 40 points, about 14 mm. A small margin looks better on paper and protects the edges from being clipped by a printer. Choose "None" for screenshots and portfolio images.

What this does to your file

• One image becomes one page, in the order shown in the list.
• Pictures are re-encoded as JPEG at quality 92, or as PNG when the image has transparent areas. Each image is centred and scaled to fit inside the margins, with proportions preserved.
• Very large images are reduced to 4000 px on their longest side. A 48-megapixel photo has far more detail than a page can show; capping it keeps the file usable.
• Orientation from the camera is applied while the picture is re-encoded, so photos taken sideways are not sideways in the PDF.
• EXIF data does not travel into the PDF. Re-encoding drops the camera details and any GPS coordinates the picture carried.
• The text in the picture stays a picture. These tools do not perform OCR, so the words in the PDF cannot be searched, selected or copied — the document is readable by a human, not by a machine.

Keeping the file small enough to send

Phone cameras produce 12 to 50 megapixel images, so eight photos can easily make a 20–30 MB PDF while many upload forms stop at 10 MB and most mail servers at 20–25 MB. Two moments to act:

• Before converting, run the pictures through Compress image with a maximum width of about 2000 px. Printed text stays perfectly readable at that size, and the file often drops by two-thirds.
• After converting, use Compress PDF. Strong mode re-encodes the page images and shrinks photo-heavy files considerably; check a page of small print afterwards, because readability goes first.

The guide My file is too big to upload covers the limits you are likely to meet, and How to reduce image file size goes into what actually makes a photo heavy.

Common problems, and what they mean

"This file type is not supported." iPhones save photos in HEIC by default, and browsers cannot read it. Either set Settings → Camera → Formats → Most Compatible so new photos are JPG, or share the pictures by email or AirDrop, which usually converts them on the way.

A picture is refused for its size. The tool accepts files up to 50 MB each. Compress the picture first rather than looking for another converter.

The pages are in the wrong order. The list order is the page order. Move items with the arrows, or rename the files with a number prefix and add them again.

The PDF is heavier than the photos put together. Each picture is re-encoded and wrapped in the PDF's own structure. If size matters more than detail, reduce the pictures to about 1500–2000 px before converting.

The scan is crooked or grey. The converter does not alter the picture itself. Straighten and crop first; a photo taken in even daylight on a dark surface needs far less correction than one taken under a ceiling lamp.

The recipient asks for one file and you already made several. Merge PDF joins them into one document without re-compressing anything.

Questions people ask

Can I put several photos on one page? Not with this tool: each image gets its own page. Windows' Print Pictures dialog offers multi-photo layouts if you need two per sheet.

Are my photos uploaded? No. The conversion runs in your browser, on your device.

Will the text in my scan be searchable? No. The PDF contains pictures of text. OCR is a separate step and is not offered here.

Which page size should I choose for an administrative form? A4 in most of the world, US Letter in the United States and Canada. Both keep the document printable without scaling.

Can I add a page later? Yes — convert the new picture and join the two PDFs with Merge PDF.

Is a photo good enough for an ID document? Usually, if it is sharp, evenly lit and uncropped at the edges. The guide Photo for an online form covers the requirements forms tend to impose.

Next steps

• Make the result lighter: Compress PDF
• Join several PDFs: Merge PDF
• Get the framing right first: Crop image