OpenToola Guides
JPG to PDF: Turn Photos and Scans into a Document That Prints Properly
Combine JPG or PNG images into a PDF, fix orientation and page size problems, and avoid the usual blurry, sideways or oversized result.
You photographed five receipts, or scanned a signed form with your phone, and now you need one PDF. Sending five JPGs is messy; the recipient wants a single document with pages in a sensible order. Combining the images into a PDF solves that, but the result can be disappointing if the photos are sideways, huge, or badly lit.
A JPG to PDF converter is not a scanner. It places each image on a page; it does not straighten the paper, remove the desk, or turn the photo into a clean scan. Knowing what the tool does, and what you need to fix before using it, saves a lot of back-and-forth.
What the converter actually does
OpenToola embeds each selected image into a new PDF. JPEG and PNG files are embedded directly. Other image formats are first drawn to a canvas and converted to PNG, which works for many formats but not every file a phone can produce.
Each image becomes one page. The page size is based on the image’s pixel dimensions, not on A4 or US Letter. A 3000 × 4000 photo can produce a page much larger than a standard sheet. That is not necessarily wrong for a digital document, but it matters when someone prints it.
The order of the files becomes the page order. If the images are named receipt-3.jpg, receipt-1.jpg, receipt-2.jpg, the PDF will follow the order in the tool, so drag them into the right sequence before converting.
Prepare the images first
Crop out the desk, the hand and the background. A page that is 80 % table and 20 % receipt wastes space and makes the text harder to read. Crop close to the paper edges, but leave a small margin so the page does not look cut off.
Straighten the photo if the paper is tilted. Most phone photo editors have a crop-and-rotate tool. A slight tilt is acceptable for a personal document; a 15-degree tilt looks careless and makes OCR harder.
Check the orientation. A photo taken in landscape may appear sideways in the PDF if the JPEG’s orientation metadata is not applied. Open the image first and rotate it if necessary, then save it. If you cannot tell, convert one image and open the result before doing all of them.
Fix the lighting if the text is in shadow. A dark corner can hide a signature or a date. Use the photo editor’s brightness and contrast, but do not overdo it; grey text on grey paper is harder to read than a slightly dark photo.
Combine the images
Open the JPG to PDF tool. Select the images. Drag the cards into the order you want. Remove duplicates or blank shots.
Click the conversion button. The tool builds the PDF and offers a download named images.pdf. Rename it before sending: receipts-january-2026.pdf or signed-form.pdf is easier to file than images.pdf.
Open the PDF and check every page. Look for a sideways page, a missing image, a duplicate, or a page that is mostly background. Check that the first page is the one you want the recipient to see first.
The page size problem
Because the page takes the image’s pixel dimensions, a phone photo can create a PDF page that is 3000 points wide. On screen it looks fine. Printed, the printer will either shrink it to fit the paper or crop it, depending on the settings. The text may become tiny or the edges may be cut.
If the document is for printing, resize the images before converting. A 300 DPI image that should print at 8 inches wide needs about 2400 pixels. A 1200-pixel image printed at 8 inches is only 150 DPI; readable for a receipt, soft for a contract.
If the document is only for screen reading, a large page is less of a problem. The recipient can zoom. But a 20 MB PDF of five photos is heavy for email; compress the images or use a lower resolution before converting.
Scanned documents versus photos
A scanner app usually crops, straightens and adjusts contrast before saving a JPG. That produces a much better PDF than a raw camera photo. If you scan documents often, use the phone’s document scanner mode, then combine the resulting images.
A raw photo of a document can still work, but it needs more preparation. Avoid shadows from your hand, shoot straight down, and use a plain background. A white page on a dark wooden table has strong contrast; the crop tool can remove most of the table, but a white page on a white desk is easier.
Do not photograph a document at an angle and expect the converter to correct the perspective. It will not. Use a scanner app with perspective correction, or reshoot from above.
Text, search and OCR
The PDF contains images, not text. The recipient cannot select a sentence or search for an invoice number. If the document needs to be searchable, run OCR after creating the PDF, or use an OCR tool on the images before combining them.
OCR works best on a straight, well-lit, high-contrast image. A blurred photo with a shadow will produce mistakes. If the text is important, check the OCR result against the image before deleting the original.
A PDF made of images is also larger than a PDF exported from a word processor. That is normal. Text documents should be exported from the source application, not photographed.
File size and email
Five phone photos can easily exceed 10 MB. Most email services accept 10–25 MB, but the recipient’s inbox may have a lower limit. Compress the images before converting, or convert to PDF and then use Compress PDF in image mode. The second option keeps the same page layout but re-encodes the images.
Do not compress a JPG to 20 % quality just to fit an email. The text becomes unreadable and the recipient will ask for a better copy. Reduce the dimensions first; a 1600-pixel-wide image is usually enough for reading on a screen.
When JPG to PDF is the wrong tool
If the original is a text document, export it to PDF from Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs. Photographing a screen or a printed page adds blur, skew and shadows for no reason.
If the document must be a searchable, accessible PDF, build it from the source or run OCR. An image-only PDF is not accessible to a screen reader.
If the recipient requires a specific page size, margins or a scanner certificate, use a tool that supports those settings. A simple image-to-PDF converter cannot guarantee compliance with a government or legal specification.
On iPhone and Android
On iPhone, select the photos in the Photos app, tap Share, and save them to Files if the converter cannot see the photo library directly. Then open the JPG to PDF tool in Safari, choose the images from Files, reorder, and convert.
On Android, the file picker can access the gallery and Downloads. If the images are in Google Photos, download them to the device first or use the picker’s Photos section. Check the order after selection; Android pickers sometimes return files in the order they were tapped, not the order shown.
Naming and page order
The file names are not just labels; they help you keep the order. Prefix them with numbers before selecting them: 01-id.jpg, 02-proof-of-address.jpg, 03-signature.jpg. If a file manager sorts alphabetically, 10 can appear before 2; zero-padded numbers avoid that.
After conversion, the page order should match the card order in the tool, not the order on disk. Check the first and last page. A missing page in the middle is harder to notice; compare the page count with the number of images.
Transparent PNGs and white backgrounds
A PNG can have transparent areas. When embedded in a PDF, the transparent parts usually appear white, because a PDF page has no transparent display like a web page. That is fine for a logo on a white page. If the transparency was meant to reveal a coloured background, flatten the image onto the intended colour before converting.
PNG files are also larger than JPEG for photographs. For a photo, use JPG. For a screenshot or a graphic with sharp text, PNG preserves the edges. The converter accepts both.
Before you send
Open the PDF on a phone and on a computer if possible. Check that every page is upright, readable and in order. Zoom into the smallest text. If the document is for a portal, check the file size limit and the accepted format; some portals want PDF/A, which this simple conversion does not create.
If the recipient will print it, print one page yourself or check the print preview. A page that looks large on screen may be cropped by the printer. If the content is cut off, resize the image and convert again.
Privacy
The images are processed in the browser. OpenToola does not upload them and does not keep a copy. The PDF is created locally and downloaded to your device.
That matters for identity documents, medical papers and signed contracts. It does not make a shared computer safe. Delete the images and the PDF after sending if they contain sensitive information, and avoid using a public machine for documents you would not leave on a desk.
Tools mentioned
Frequently asked questions
Can I put several images in one PDF?
Yes. Select the images, arrange them in the order you want, and convert. Each image becomes one page.
Why is my PDF page so large?
The tool uses the image dimensions as the page size. A high-resolution photo can create a very large page. Resize or crop the image first if you need A4 or Letter.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. OpenToola builds the PDF in your browser. The images are not sent to a server.