How to combine images into one PDF

Typical reasons to combine images

The most common case is paperwork: photographed receipts for an expense claim, the pages of a contract taken with a phone, or ID documents required as one file. Others include a set of screenshots for a bug report, a portfolio of drawings, or a photographed notebook you want to share as a document.

In each case, the value of a PDF is that it fixes the order and the page size, so the reader sees your sequence instead of a folder of files sorted by name.

Prepare the images before combining

A few minutes of preparation prevents most problems. Name or number the files in the order you want, since that makes checking easier, and rotate obviously sideways photos. Remove duplicates and blurry retakes, because every extra image is an extra page.

Think about whether the images share a size. A mix of phone photos and small screenshots will look uneven if every page is scaled to A4, so decide on a page mode before you begin.

Steps to combine images into one PDF

Images to PDF works in your browser, so your pictures are not uploaded.

• Open Images to PDF and add all the images at once, or add more later.
• Drag them into the correct order, or use the move buttons on a phone.
• Rotate any image that is on its side and remove any you do not need.
• Choose page size (fit to image, A4 or US Letter), orientation (automatic, portrait or landscape) and margin (none, small or big).
• Create the PDF, download it and scroll through every page to confirm order and orientation.

Which formats are supported

Images to PDF accepts JPG and PNG, and also WebP, GIF, BMP and AVIF, provided your browser can decode them. JPG and PNG are embedded without recompression, while the other formats are converted to PNG first. A PNG with transparency keeps its transparency.

HEIC, the default photo format on many iPhones, and TIFF are not supported. Change your camera setting to most compatible, or convert those files to JPG on your device before adding them. If everything you have is JPG or PNG, JPG to PDF and PNG to PDF do the same job with a narrower file filter.

Page size, orientation and margins for mixed images

Fit to image gives each page the size of its picture, so a portrait photo and a landscape screenshot each fill their own page without white bands. The document then has pages of different sizes, which is fine on screen but less tidy for printing.

For a uniform document, choose A4 or US Letter with automatic orientation. Each image is scaled to fit its page, and portrait and landscape images each get a suitable orientation. Add a small margin when the file will be printed, so nothing is cut at the edges.

Controlling the file size

Because JPG and PNG images are embedded as they are, the PDF will weigh about as much as all the images together. A dozen 4 MB phone photos become a file near 50 MB, which many email systems and upload forms will refuse.

There are two ways to reduce it. Resize or re-save the source images at a lower resolution before combining, or run the finished PDF through Compress PDF, which re-encodes embedded images at a lower quality. For scanned text, keep enough resolution that small print stays legible.

After you have the PDF

The text in a photographed page is part of the picture, so it cannot be selected or searched. If you need that, run OCR PDF on the result. If you later need to reorder or remove pages, Organize PDF lets you do it on a thumbnail grid without starting over.