JPG to PDF converter

Paper sizes

On a paper size, Auto turns each page to match its image, so a landscape photo gets a landscape page rather than a thin strip across a portrait one. Portrait and Landscape force every page one way.

Same shape as the image makes every page the shape of its photo, scaled so its long side matches A4’s. A page sized straight from the pixels would make a phone photo a sheet more than a metre tall, which viewers shrink to fit but printers and upload checks do not.

The margin setting leaves 10 mm (Small) or 20 mm (Large) of white around each image. Choose None when the photo is already a cropped document and every millimetre of it matters.

What the quality settings do

Each setting keeps a different number of pixels, measured as the long edge of the image, and encodes it as JPEG at a different quality:

A 12 megapixel phone photo is 4,032 × 3,024 pixels. At Smallest file it is redrawn at 1,403 × 1,052, about an eighth of the pixels, and that is where most of the saving comes from. Text on a photo of a document stays readable at that size, which is what makes it the right choice for upload forms.

Images already smaller than the limit keep their own size. Nothing is ever enlarged, because enlarging adds bytes and no detail.

The finished PDF’s size appears before you download it. What it comes to depends on what is in the photos: a white page of text compresses far better than a busy photograph at the same setting.

Why every photo is redrawn

Copying each JPEG into the PDF untouched would be faster, and it is what many converters do. It causes three problems this tool avoids by redrawing every image instead:

• Sideways pages. The rotation flag on phone photos is lost, as the questions below explain.
• Black backgrounds. A PNG with transparent areas turns them black when stored as JPEG. Every image is drawn onto white first.
• No size control. A 12 megapixel photo embedded as it is stays 12 megapixels. Redrawing is what lets the quality setting cap it.

iPhone photos in HEIC format are decoded here too, even on browsers that cannot open HEIC themselves, so they go straight in without a separate HEIC to JPG step.

Getting under an upload limit

Government portals, job applications and university admissions often cap each file at a few hundred kilobytes. To get there:

1. Choose Smallest file, and a margin of None if the photos are already cropped.
2. If the form wants each document separately, add them all and choose One PDF per image.
3. Check the size shown before you download.
4. If one is still over the limit, run it through the PDF compressor on Shrink hard at 96 dpi, or shrink the photo first with the image resizer.

To combine PDFs you already have, use PDF merge. To go the other way and turn PDF pages into images, use PDF to JPG.

Privacy

Photos of ID cards, family cards, contracts and certificates are exactly the files that should not be handed to a stranger’s server. Here they never leave your device: they are read, redrawn and assembled into the PDF in this tab, and the PDF is saved straight from memory to your downloads.