Scan Photos to PDF
Turn photos of documents into clean, lightweight scanned PDFs. Your files are never sent to any server.
How to Scan Photos to PDF
- Click "Choose Photos" or drag and drop photos of your documents.
- Check the cleaned-up previews, drag to reorder pages, and rotate or delete any you don't need.
- Pick a filter and file size, then press "Download as PDF" to get one lightweight PDF.
What the scan filter actually does
A phone photo of a sheet of paper is never truly white: the light falls unevenly, your hand casts a shadow and the paper itself may be yellowed. Scan to PDF corrects that the way a flatbed scanner would. It first estimates what the blank paper looks like across the whole photo, then divides every pixel by that background. Shadows, gradients and yellow tints disappear, the paper becomes clean white, and finally a contrast curve makes the ink darker and crisper. The result looks like a scan rather than a photo.
Choosing a filter
| Filter | Best for | File size |
|---|---|---|
| B&W | Printed text, contracts, letters, forms, receipts | Smallest |
| Grayscale | Pencil notes, faint handwriting, pages with grey photos | Small |
| Color | Stamps, signatures in blue ink, coloured charts, ID documents | Larger |
The preview cards update when you change the filter, so you can compare before downloading. Some offices require a visible coloured stamp or signature; in that case use Color.
File size presets
Every page is resized and compressed before it goes into the PDF. The original photo is never embedded, which is why a 4 MB phone picture becomes a page of just a few hundred kilobytes.
- Smallest: about 150 DPI on A4. Ideal for email and upload portals with strict limits.
- Balanced: about 200 DPI on A4. Sharp, easy-to-read pages at a modest size; the right choice for most documents.
- Sharpest: about 260 DPI on A4. For small print, fine handwriting or documents you want to print again.
Page orientation is chosen automatically from each photo, and you can pick A4 or US Letter as the page size.
How to take a photo that scans well
- Use even light. Daylight near a window or a bright room is better than the phone's flash, which creates a glare spot.
- Lay the page flat on a dark, plain surface so the edges are clearly visible.
- Hold the phone parallel to the paper, straight above it, so the text isn't skewed. The tool does not correct perspective.
- Fill the frame with the page and leave only a small border, because the photo is not cropped automatically.
- Keep it steady and tap to focus on the text before you shoot.
Our step-by-step guide to scanning documents with your phone covers these points with more detail.
Several pages, one document
Add all the pages of a document at once, drag them into order, rotate any that are sideways and delete failed shots. With "Merge all pages into a single lightweight PDF" ticked you get one multi-page file; otherwise each photo becomes its own PDF in a ZIP archive. HEIC photos from iPhone are accepted and converted automatically.
Private, even for sensitive paperwork
Scanning is often used for the most personal documents: passports, medical letters, payslips, tax forms. Here, every step runs inside your browser. The photos are processed on your own device and the PDF is saved directly to your downloads; nothing is uploaded or stored anywhere else.
Related guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Which image formats are supported?
JPG, PNG, and WebP images are all supported.
Why is the PDF so small?
Each page is cleaned, downscaled to about 200 DPI for A4, and compressed before it goes into the PDF, so a multi-megabyte photo typically becomes a few hundred kilobytes or less.
Does the scan filter change my original photos?
No. Your original files are never modified or uploaded; the filter only affects the pages that are written into the PDF, and all of it happens in your browser.