How to make a PDF out of whatever you have
Almost nobody needs "a PDF" in the abstract: they need to turn something they already have into one. The answer depends on what that something is.
4 minute read
First: what have you got right now?
Everything else follows from this. Find your case:
- Photos or screenshots → the several-images-into-one-PDF tool.
- A Word document → the converter, picking PDF as the target.
- An Excel sheet → same thing, the converter draws it as a table.
- A mix of different types (a PDF, two photos and a Word file) → the merge-files-into-a-PDF tool, which is the one that takes the mix.
The commonest case: photos to PDF
Open the several-images-into-one-PDF tool.
Drop all the photos in at once. JPG, PNG or iPhone HEIC all work.
Order them with the arrows. The order they end in is the page order.
Pick the page size and press the button. The PDF downloads straight away.
The case almost nobody handles well: mixing types
You need to send one file containing the contract as PDF, a photo of your ID and an appendix in Word. Most sites make you convert each piece separately and merge them afterwards, in three steps.
The merge files into a PDF tool takes the mix directly: drop everything in together, order it, and one PDF comes out. Anything that is not a PDF gets converted along the way without you doing a thing.
Choosing the page size
- A4 for paperwork, agencies, or anything that will be printed. Every page comes out the same.
- Fitted to the image if they are photos and you do not want white borders around them.
When in doubt, A4. It is what whoever receives the document expects.
If the PDF is too heavy to send
Modern phone photos weigh several megabytes each, so a ten-photo PDF hits twenty megabytes easily, and plenty of mail servers cut off at twenty-five.
Run it through the compress PDF tool. On documents made of photos it usually drops by 60% to 90%, and still reads and prints fine.
It works the same on a phone
There is no app to install: open this site in your phone browser and pick the photos from your gallery. For very large files a computer has more room to work.