How to turn photos into one PDF
Receipts, pages of a contract, a few photos for a form: one PDF is easier to send and to print than a pile of images. Here is how to make it, and how heavy it gets.
Reviewed by Victor Yuki Matusita on . First published . First version, with the measurements of November 2, 2026.
A PDF of photos keeps them in order, prints each one on its own page and opens on any computer or phone. Many forms and offices also ask for exactly that: one PDF, not a set of images.
The catch is size. Put into one PDF, our three phone photos made a file 80% as heavy as the photos themselves. We measured what happens to the size, with and without compressing the photos first.
Turn your photos into one PDF here
Drop your photos in the order you want them, or drag them into order. Each one becomes a page, the PDF is made in this browser tab, and nothing is uploaded.
Drop images here
or paste with Ctrl V · JPG, PNG or WebPJPG, PNG or WebP, as many as you like
On an iPhone
Apple’s Preview app on the iPhone can export an image as a PDF, and Apple notes it can also compress the file on the way. To add more photos, Apple’s guide describes inserting an image into a PDF: touch and hold a page thumbnail, then tap Insert from File. That makes a PDF of photos one insert at a time.
On a computer
Windows includes a printer called Microsoft Print to PDF, which Microsoft describes as part of Windows 10 and Windows 11. From an app that prints your photos, choose it in the list of printers and the pages are saved as a PDF instead of printed. The page size and margins come from the print settings, so check them before you save.
The tool on this page works the same way on a computer and on a phone, in the browser: drop the photos, set the page size if you need Letter or A4, and download one PDF.
What the tool does with each photo
By default each page is the size of its photo, so nothing is cropped and no white border is added. You can also choose Letter or A4, and each photo then sits on the page with a margin. Photos are written into the PDF as JPGs at a high quality; an image with transparency goes in as PNG, so the transparent parts stay clear.
Every photo is written again from its pixels. That is what keeps the location and the camera details out of the PDF: our PDF carried zero GPS data, though every photo we put in had it.
How heavy the PDF gets
Our three real phone photos weighed 9.3 MB together. Put straight into one PDF, they made a file of 7.4 MB, which is 80% of the photos. Almost all of that is the photos themselves: the pictures inside the PDF weighed 7.4 MB.
The PDF came out a little lighter than the photos only because the tool saves the pictures at its own quality, a bit lower than the phone cameras used. It is not compression in any real sense.
Compress the photos first
We then ran the same photos through Compress image first, at its Recommended level. They came out at 2.5 MB, 73% lighter than the originals. Turned into one PDF, they made a file of 3.6 MB, which is 38% of the original photos.
That PDF is still 42% heavier than the compressed photos it was made from. The reason is the step above: Image to PDF writes each photo again at its own high quality, and that takes back part of the saving. The order still pays off, but if the PDF has to be as small as possible, compress the finished PDF too.
Photos of documents
When the photos are of paper, a little care before the PDF makes a better file. Crop each photo to the sheet, so the table, the floor and your fingers stay out of it, and turn any photo that came out sideways. Crop image and Rotate image do both in the browser, before the photos go into the PDF.
Take the photos in good light and straight from above. A sharp photo of a page reads well at a much smaller size than a blurry one, so it also compresses better.
Photos from an iPhone
Image to PDF takes JPG, PNG and WebP. An iPhone saves photos as HEIC by default, so turn them into JPGs first with HEIC to JPG, then put the JPGs into one PDF. Our guide on converting HEIC to JPG explains the formats and the settings that avoid HEIC altogether.
A short routine
Put the photos in order, compress them if the PDF has to be emailed, then turn them into one PDF. If it is still too heavy, run Compress PDF on it: our guide to large PDFs shows what each mode does to a PDF of photos.
Keep the original photos. The PDF is for sending and printing; the photos are the copy you can always go back to.
What we measured
Our three real phone photos, straight into one PDF, and again after Compress image. The share is against the original photos.
| Step | Size | Of the original photos |
|---|---|---|
| The original photos | 9.3 MB | 100% |
| One PDF of the photos | 7.4 MB | 80% |
| The photos after Compress image | 2.5 MB | 27% |
| One PDF of the compressed photos | 3.6 MB | 38% |
Measured on November 2, 2026 through the Image to PDF and Compress image pages of this site in Chromium 156 and in WebKit 27.2 on Windows, which gave the same sizes, on our real phone photos at the default settings. The pictures inside the PDF were counted with pdf-lib.
Sources
Related tools and guides
Compress image
Make a JPG, PNG or WebP lighter, right in your browser.
Merge PDF
Put several PDFs into one, in the order you choose.
Compress PDF
Make a PDF smaller, with or without touching its images.
Why is my PDF so large?
What takes the space in a PDF, and what each mode of Compress PDF does to it.
How to combine PDFs on a phone
The ways to put PDFs together on an iPhone or an Android phone, and the size you get.