How each picture is placed on the page
Every image gets its own page. The tool takes the printable area (the page minus the margin on each side) and scales the picture to fill as much of it as possible without cropping or stretching, then centers it. PDF pages are measured in points, 72 to the inch, so Letter is 612 × 792 points and A4 is 595.28 × 841.89 points (210 × 297 mm, the ISO 216 size).
Printable box = page width − 2 × margin, by page height − 2 × margin
Scale = the smaller of (box width ÷ image width) and (box height ÷ image height)
Picture on page = image width × scale, by image height × scale
Worked example: a 12-megapixel phone photo on Letter
A 12-megapixel phone photo is 4032 × 3024 pixels. It is wider than tall, so with Auto orientation the Letter page turns landscape: 792 × 612 points. Small margins (36 points) leave a box of 720 × 540. Scale = the smaller of 720 ÷ 4032 and 540 ÷ 3024, both 0.1786. The photo lands at 720 × 540 points, or 10 × 7.5 inches, which works out to about 403 pixels per inch. That is plenty for a sharp print.
What each setting does
| Setting | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Letter | US and Canadian forms, landlords, schools and printers. |
| A4 | Most other countries use A4 as their standard paper size, so pick it for anything going to or printed outside North America. |
| Fit to image | Screen-only PDFs with no white border. The page is the size of the picture at 96 pixels per inch. |
| Auto orientation | Mixed photos: wide pictures get landscape pages, tall ones portrait. |
| Margin | Small or large if the PDF will be printed, so nothing falls into the printer's unprintable edge. |
Privacy
Photos of documents are some of the most sensitive files people convert: driver's licenses, Social Security cards, bank letters, signed leases. This converter never uploads them. The page loads its code once and then builds the PDF on your device, so you can even switch off Wi-Fi before you start.
Common uses
- Rental applications. Photograph your ID, pay stubs and reference letter, then send one PDF instead of six attachments.
- School forms. Turn photos of a signed permission slip or worksheet into a PDF that a school portal will accept.
- Receipts. Snap a stack of receipts and file them as a single document.
Limits
Images are not compressed further, so the PDF is about as large as all the pictures added together; the ticket shows that total before you start. If a portal has a size cap, take the photos at a lower resolution or send fewer pages per file. HEIC photos must be converted to JPG first. Very large images (over about 16.7 million pixels) are scaled down when they have to be re-saved, because phone browsers cannot draw anything bigger.
Questions people ask
Are my photos uploaded to make the PDF?
No. The PDF is built in your browser on your own device and saved straight to your Downloads. No image is sent to a server, which is why it works for ID cards, pay stubs and signed forms.
Will the PDF lose image quality?
JPG and PNG files are placed into the PDF exactly as they are, byte for byte, so nothing is lost. Only two kinds of picture are re-saved: WebP images, and phone JPGs that are stored sideways with a rotation tag. Those are re-saved as JPG at 95% quality, which is visually identical in normal use.
Why was my phone photo sideways in other PDF tools?
Phones often save a photo in the sensor's orientation and add an EXIF tag that says "rotate 90° when showing this". Many PDF tools ignore the tag. This tool reads it and turns the picture upright before placing it on the page.
Which page size should I choose?
Use Letter (8.5 × 11 in) for the US and Canada and A4 (210 × 297 mm) almost everywhere else. Choose "Fit to image" when the PDF will only be viewed on screen and you do not want white borders.
Can I add HEIC photos from an iPhone?
Not directly. Convert them first with the HEIC to JPG tool on this site, then add the JPGs here. Or set the iPhone camera to Most Compatible so it saves JPG in the first place.
How many images can I put in one PDF?
There is no fixed limit. Each image is held in memory while the PDF is built, so a phone may run out of memory with a few hundred full-size photos. A laptop handles far more.