How to scan documents to PDF using your phone

Take photos that read like scans

• Place the page flat on a dark, plain surface in even daylight or bright room light.
• Hold the phone directly above the page, not at an angle, and avoid your own shadow.
• Fill the frame with the page but keep all four corners in the shot.
• Tap to focus on the text, then zoom into the photo to check that small print is sharp.
• Crop away the background in your phone’s photo editor before converting.

Turn the photos into one PDF

1. Open JPG to PDF in your phone’s browser.
2. Upload the photos in page order (up to 40 images at once, 20 MB each).
3. Click Convert to PDF and download the file.
4. If your photos are iPhone HEIC files, convert them with HEIC to JPG first.

Open JPG to PDF

Check the PDF before sending

• Scroll through every page: right order, nothing cut off, no blurry pages.
• Turn any sideways page upright with Rotate PDF.
• Each page takes the size of its photo, so the PDF can be several megabytes. Use Compress PDF if the recipient has an upload limit, then check the small print again.

Open Compress PDF

What this does not do

This turns photos into PDF pages; it does not make the text searchable or straighten skewed pages automatically. A dedicated scanner app can flatten perspective, and OCR is a separate step if you need to search or copy the text.