How to convert JPG and other images to a PDF here
The whole job usually takes under a minute, and nothing leaves the page while you do it:
- Add the images. Drop them on the box, use Choose images, or paste a screenshot straight from the clipboard. On a phone, Take photo opens the camera, so a stack of paper can be photographed page by page into one document.
- Check the order. Every image becomes a page, numbered in the corner of its thumbnail. Drag a thumbnail to move it, or select it and use the arrows above the grid. Sort by name puts IMG_0009 before IMG_0010, the way people count; Sort by date taken uses the time the camera recorded.
- Turn anything that is sideways. Phone photos carry an orientation tag that the tool reads, so most pages are already upright. Where a page still lies on its side, rotate it in 90-degree steps.
- Choose the paper. A4 or US Letter for anything that will be printed, filed or uploaded to a form; Fit each image when the PDF will only ever be read on a screen.
- Choose the quality. Original quality is right for most jobs. Smaller file is for when a portal or an email caps the size.
- Convert, then download or open the PDF in a new tab to check it before you send it.
The preview on the right is drawn from the same numbers the PDF writer uses: the paper, the margins, the placement and any crop. If it looks right there, it will look the same in the file.
What happens to your photos: nothing leaves your device
Most online converters upload your files to a server, convert them there and keep them for a while before deleting them. This one does not. When you open the page, your browser downloads the converter itself: the JavaScript code, and later, only if you need it, the HEIC decoder. From then on the work happens inside the browser tab. Your images are read from your disk into the tab’s memory, decoded, placed on pages and written into a PDF, which is handed back to you as a download. No request carries the pictures, their names or even how many there are.
That is also why there are no limits. A converter that runs on a server pays for every file it processes, so it rations free use. Here your own computer or phone does the work, so there is nothing to ration. The practical limit is your device’s memory, covered under Limits below.
You do not have to take this on trust. It takes about a minute to check:
- Open your browser’s developer tools (F12, or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac) and choose the Network tab before you add any files.
- Add a few images and convert them. The first time, you will see small requests for the converter’s own code from dothecalculation.com, and the consent and analytics scripts every page of the site loads, including the analytics page-view record of which page you opened. None of them carries your images, their names or how many there are, and there is nothing the size of your photos.
- For the strongest test, load this page, switch on airplane mode or unplug the network, then convert. It still works, because nothing needs to be sent anywhere.
Our guide Are online PDF converters safe? explains what uploading a file to a converter involves, and how to run the same check on any site.
Page size, orientation and margins
Fit each image makes every page exactly the shape of its picture, with no white bands. It is the best choice for a PDF that will only be viewed on a screen, such as a photo set or a batch of screenshots, because nothing is wasted and nothing is cropped. The catch is that the pages have no standard size, so a printer will scale each one to its paper.
A4 and US Letter are what almost everything else expects. A4 (210 × 297 mm) is the paper size in most of the world; US Letter (8.5 × 11 inches) is standard in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Philippines, and the tool picks Letter by default when your browser is set to one of those regions. Choose one of them for a scanned form, a receipt bundle for expenses, a document for a portal, or anything someone may print. Legal (8.5 × 14 inches) suits US legal forms, and A3 suits drawings and posters.
Orientation set to Automatic turns each page to match its image: a landscape photo gets a landscape page, a receipt gets a portrait one. Force Portrait when every page must face the same way, for example when you are assembling a form that will be printed double-sided.
Margins are the white border around the image. Small (a quarter of an inch, about 6 mm) keeps the image clear of the unprintable edge most office printers have. Medium (half an inch) looks like a document. None prints edge to edge, which only a borderless photo printer can do.
Placement decides what happens when the image and the paper are different shapes. Fit shows the whole image as large as the margins allow, leaving white space on two sides. Fill covers the whole area inside the margins and crops whatever overflows, so check the preview before you use it on a document where the edges matter. Actual size prints the image at the DPI you choose: a 3000 × 2000 pixel photo at 300 DPI is 10 × 6.67 inches, too wide for Letter paper, so the tool crops it and tells you; at 400 DPI it is 7.5 × 5 inches and fits.
Image quality and file size
A JPG photo is already compressed. Opening it, drawing it and saving it as a JPG again compresses it a second time, and each round throws away a little more detail and adds a little more blockiness around edges and in skies. Converters that re-encode every photo therefore produce a PDF that is slightly worse than the photos you gave them, even at a high quality setting.
Original quality avoids that. A JPG photo goes into the PDF byte for byte: the PDF format can hold JPG data directly, so the tool copies the compressed picture into the file and adds only the instructions to draw it. What you get out is exactly what you put in, and the PDF is barely larger than the photos. If a photo was taken sideways, the turn is applied in the PDF’s drawing instructions rather than by redrawing the pixels. PNG, GIF, BMP and SVG images are stored losslessly. HEIC, AVIF and WebP cannot be stored in a PDF as they are, so they become high-quality JPG.
Smaller file is for when size matters more than the last bit of detail: an email limit, an upload portal that accepts 2 MB, or a 40-page scan of phone photos. It redraws every image at the longest side you choose and saves it at the JPG quality you set. For reading on screen, 1600 pixels on the long side is plenty; for printing a page at A4 or Letter, about 2400 pixels (roughly 200 DPI on the paper) keeps text crisp.
We measured what the settings do to two typical inputs, converted with this tool in Chrome:
- A 12-megapixel test photo (4032 × 3024, the size most phones shoot; 2.1 MB as a JPG): Original quality gave a 2.1 MB PDF; Smaller file at 85% and 2400 px, 365 KB; at 70% and 1600 px, 102 KB.
- A 300-DPI colour scan of an A4 page of text (2481 × 3508; 869 KB as a JPG): Original quality, 870 KB; Smaller file at 85% and 2400 px, 347 KB; at 70% and 1600 px, 157 KB.
- The same scan saved as a PNG (6.9 MB): Original quality stores it losslessly, 5.0 MB; Smaller file with PNG converted to JPG at 85% and 2400 px, 345 KB.
A real photo with more fine detail, such as foliage, gravel or a crowd, makes larger files at every setting, roughly in proportion. The size shown under the preview is an estimate made before converting; the exact size appears when the PDF is ready. If a PDF is still too large, lower the longest side before lowering the quality: halving the pixel count roughly halves the file, and text stays readable longer than it does at low JPG quality.
Turning photos of documents into one PDF
Photographing paperwork with a phone and converting the pictures is the quickest way to get a signed form, a set of receipts or a letter into a PDF. A few habits make the result look like a scan rather than a snapshot:
- Shoot from directly above, with the page filling most of the frame, in even daylight or under a ceiling light rather than with the flash, which leaves a hot spot and a shadow of the phone.
- Put the paper on a dark, plain surface so its edges are obvious, and flatten folds under a book first.
- Take the pages in order. The tool numbers pages in the order you add them, and Sort by date taken rebuilds that order from the camera’s own timestamps if the files arrive shuffled.
- Check each thumbnail for rotation. The camera’s orientation tag is applied automatically; a page shot flat on a table sometimes gets the wrong tag, and one press of rotate fixes it.
- Make one PDF per document. A contract and a set of receipts are two files for whoever receives them.
This tool rotates pages in quarter turns; it does not straighten a page that was photographed at an angle, crop to the paper’s edge, flatten the perspective or clean up shadows. Phone scanner apps do that: the Notes app on an iPhone, Google Drive’s scan button on Android, or the scanner in Microsoft Lens. Use one of them when the result must look like it came off a flatbed scanner, and this tool when you already have the pictures. Our guide to PDF, JPG and PNG covers which format to scan to and at what resolution.
Formats you can drop in
The tool identifies each file from its contents, not its extension, so a photo named .png that is really a JPG is still read correctly. What each format becomes:
- JPG and JPEG: embedded unchanged in Original quality, including progressive JPGs and CMYK files from print workflows.
- PNG: stored losslessly. Transparent areas are filled with the background colour you pick, white by default, because a PDF page has nothing behind it but paper.
- WebP: decoded by the browser and stored as high-quality JPG, or at the quality you choose.
- GIF: the first frame. An animated GIF becomes one still page.
- BMP: stored losslessly.
- SVG: drawn at the DPI you choose, so a logo or diagram stays sharp at 300 DPI. Scripts inside an SVG are never run: it is drawn the same way a web page draws an image.
- AVIF: works in browsers that can decode it, which includes current Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari. An older browser gets a clear message rather than a blank page.
- HEIC and HEIF from iPhones and iPads: decoded by a WebAssembly decoder that downloads only when you add a HEIC file, then stored as high-quality JPG. A live photo or a burst saved as one HEIC file contributes its main image.
TIFF and camera RAW files (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG and the rest) are not supported. Browsers cannot decode TIFF, and RAW files need each camera maker’s own processing to become a picture. The tool names the file and says why instead of skipping it. Export a JPG from Photos, Preview, Lightroom or the camera’s own software, then add that. A file that is already a PDF belongs in PDF to JPG instead.
Photo metadata and privacy
A photo from a phone carries more than the picture. Its EXIF data usually records the date and time it was taken, the make and model of the phone, the camera settings, and, if location services were on, the GPS position to within a few metres. Put that photo into a PDF unchanged and all of it travels with the document to whoever receives it.
Remove photo metadata is on by default for that reason. With it on, the tool strips EXIF, XMP and IPTC blocks, comments and anything a camera appends after the picture (motion-photo video, for instance) before the JPG goes into the PDF. The compressed image data itself is copied untouched, so there is no loss of quality. The colour profile stays, because it keeps colours accurate. Images that are redrawn (PNG, HEIC, WebP and anything in Smaller file mode) never carry metadata into the PDF at all. The list above the options tells you how many of your photos carried metadata and how many had a location.
The PDF itself gets a title (the one you type, or the first image’s name) and the name of this tool as the producer. No author, no dates, no keywords. To check any PDF’s metadata afterwards, open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader and look under File, Properties, or in Preview on a Mac under Tools, Show Inspector. To check a photo before you send it, look at its details in Windows Explorer (right-click, Properties, Details) or the info panel in Photos on an iPhone.
One PDF or one per image
One PDF puts every image into a single document in the order shown. It is what you want for a multi-page document, a receipt bundle or a portfolio. To add pages to a PDF you made earlier, or to change its page order later, Merge PDF takes the existing PDF and new images together and lays every page out in one grid to rearrange.
One PDF per image makes a separate PDF from each image and packs them into a ZIP, each named after its image. That suits a portal that wants every receipt or every certificate as its own file, or a folder of scans that each need to be filed separately.
Page numbers print “3 / 12” at the bottom right of each page, and File name under each image prints the image’s name at the bottom left, which helps anyone checking a stack of receipts against a claim. Both sit in a thin footer strip below the image so they never cover it. The PDF’s own file name comes from the title you type, or from the first image when you leave it blank.
Sending the PDF and printing it
Whoever receives the file usually wants three things: one PDF rather than a pile of photos, pages in reading order and the right way up, and a file small enough to attach or upload. Email services cap attachments: Gmail’s limit for personal accounts is 25 MB (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6584), and Outlook.com’s is also 25 MB (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/sending-limits-in-outlook-com). Upload portals are often stricter. US immigration’s online filing accepts PDF, JPG or JPEG files of up to 12 MB each (https://www.uscis.gov/file-online/tips-for-filing-forms-online), and Canada’s immigration department caps each document uploaded to its secure account at 4 MB (https://ircc.canada.ca/english/helpcentre/answer.asp?qnum=1123&top=23). When a limit applies, use Smaller file with a longest side of 2000 to 2400 pixels, and check the size shown before you convert. If a PDF you have already combined is still over the limit, Compress PDF recompresses the scanned images inside it, keeps any text as text, and tells you plainly if the file cannot get under the size you set.
To print at the right size, choose A4 or Letter here to match the paper in the printer, then print at Actual size or 100% in the print dialog rather than Fit to page, so a page drawn with margins is not shrunk a second time. If the printer is set to the other paper size, most print dialogs scale the page to fit, which is harmless for photos but changes the scale of anything measured, such as a drawing.
A PDF made here cannot be password-protected by this tool. If the document is sensitive, add a password in Adobe Acrobat, in Preview on a Mac (File, Export as PDF, Security Options), or in LibreOffice, or send it through a service that encrypts the transfer.
Limits, and what the tool does about them
There is no limit on the number of images, file sizes or pages. What your device can hold is the real limit, because every image has to be decoded into memory to be converted, at four bytes per pixel. A 12-megapixel photo takes about 48 MB while it is being processed; a 50-megapixel one takes 200 MB.
The tool keeps memory use low in three ways. It handles images one at a time and releases each before starting the next, so a batch of 40 photos needs no more memory than the largest one. It does the heavy work in a background worker, so the page stays responsive and you can cancel at any point. And it sets a pixel budget for the device: about 50 megapixels on a desktop, less on phones, and 16 megapixels on an iPhone or iPad, where Safari closes tabs that use too much memory. An image above the budget is scaled down to fit, and a note on its thumbnail says so. JPG photos in Original quality are never decoded for the PDF, so the budget does not apply to them.
Very large batches on a phone go more smoothly with Smaller file mode, and splitting 100 photos into two or three PDFs is kinder to an older device than one enormous file.
Your data
The tool remembers only your settings (page size, margins, placement, quality, background colour and whether metadata is removed) in your browser’s local storage, under the name dtc.filetools.v1, so the page opens the way you left it. It does not store your images, their names, the PDF title or how many files you converted. Closing the tab clears the images from memory. Clearing this site’s data in your browser settings removes the saved settings too.
General information about image and PDF formats. Requirements for page size, file type, resolution and file size differ between organisations, so check the instructions of the office, portal or person you are sending the PDF to.