How to turn phone photos into one PDF, and make it small enough to upload

The short answer. Twelve phone photos at two per page make a 6-page PDF. Add the photos to Image to PDF, drag them into order, pick a page layout and press Create PDF. If it is too big to upload, run it through Compress PDF: on Balanced, each photo is re-saved at no more than 1,754 pixels on its long side.

Offices, colleges and portals that ask you to "send the documents" usually want one PDF, not twelve separate pictures. Both steps below run in your phone's or computer's browser, so photos of ID cards, bank statements and certificates are never uploaded anywhere.

How to make the PDF

1. Open Image to PDF and press Select images. Pick every photo at once; up to 50 images of up to 50 MB each.
2. Drag the thumbnails into the order the reader should see them. Each thumbnail has a rotate button for a photo that came in sideways, and a remove button.
3. Choose a Page layout. The picker draws each arrangement, so you see the page before you make it.
4. Leave Page size on A4 unless the portal asks for something else. Letter, Legal, A3, A5 and Fit to image are the other choices.
5. Press Create PDF, check the first page in the preview, then press Download PDF.

iPhone photos are usually HEIC, which many portals refuse. They go straight in: the HEIC is decoded on your device, so there is no separate convert-to-JPG step. The HEIC to PDF page opens with that wording if you prefer it.

Which layout to pick

Layout	Photos per page	Good for
One per page, portrait	1	A document scan or a certificate, one page each
Two per page, stacked	2	The front and back of an ID card on one page
Four per page, grid	4	Receipts and bills, four to a sheet
Six per page, grid	6	A contact sheet of photos
Nine per page, grid	9	The most photos that still stay readable

There are also landscape versions of one, two and four per page, for wide photos and screenshots.

A worked example

You have photographed six documents front and back: twelve photos.

• One per page gives 12 images on 12 pages. Clear, but long.
• Two per page, stacked gives 12 images on 6 pages, each document's front above its back. The file is named after the first photo with the layout added, for example IMG_2041-2-per-page.pdf.
• Four per page gives 12 images on 3 pages. With 10 photos instead of 12, the plan is 10 images on 3 pages, and the last page holds only two.

The page count is simply the number of photos divided by the photos per page, rounded up.

How to make the PDF smaller

A PDF of photos is roughly the size of the photos inside it, and a phone photo is several megabytes. There are three ways to bring it down.

1. Lower Image quality before you create the PDF. The slider re-encodes the photos as JPEG before they are placed; it starts at 85.
2. Put more photos on each page. Each one is drawn smaller.
3. Run the finished PDF through Compress PDF. It re-saves only the pictures inside, at a lower resolution, and leaves any text alone.

Compress PDF caps every picture at a number of dots per inch of the page. For a 12-megapixel phone photo (4,000 × 3,000 pixels) on an A4 page, that works out as:

Level	Resolution	The photo is re-saved at
Smaller file	100 DPI	1,170 × 878 pixels
Balanced	150 DPI	1,754 × 1,316 pixels
Better quality	200 DPI	2,339 × 1,754 pixels

The arithmetic: an A4 page is 841.89 points tall, and 72 points make an inch, so at 150 DPI the long side may be 841.89 ÷ 72 × 150 = 1,754 pixels. If a portal gives a size limit instead, choose Target size, or open the Compress PDF set to 200 KB; lighter settings are tried one by one until the file fits.

If it doesn't work

• The first HEIC photo is slow to appear. It loads a small decoder, about 1 MB, once per visit. After that the thumbnails are instant.
• A page came out sideways. Press the rotate button on that thumbnail and create the PDF again. Each press turns the photo a quarter turn clockwise.
• Compress PDF says Above target. Even the lightest readable setting stayed over your limit. Split the PDF into two files, or tick "Go below readable" and accept that small text will blur.
• The compressed file is not smaller. You get the original back rather than a bigger file. This happens when the photos were already small.

Questions people ask

How do I combine several photos into one PDF on my phone?

Open Image to PDF in the phone's browser, press Select images and choose all the photos at once. Drag the thumbnails into order, pick a layout such as one or two per page, and press Create PDF, then Download PDF. Up to 50 photos go into one file, and nothing is uploaded to a server.

Can I put two photos on one page, like an ID card front and back?

Yes. Choose "Two per page, stacked" under Page layout and put the front just before the back in the thumbnail order. Each pair then shares one portrait page, front above back. Twelve photos become six pages. "Two per page, side by side" uses a landscape page instead, which suits two tall photos.

Why is my PDF of photos so large?

A PDF is about the size of the photos inside it, and a phone photo is several megabytes. Lower the Image quality slider before creating the PDF, put more photos on each page, or run the finished file through Compress PDF. On Balanced, a 12-megapixel photo on an A4 page is re-saved at 1,754 by 1,316 pixels.

Does the PDF keep the photo's location and camera details?

No. Phone photos carry EXIF details, often including the GPS position where they were taken. When a JPEG goes into the PDF as it is, only the parts needed to show the picture are copied, and the EXIF, comments and any motion-photo video are dropped. A photo that is re-encoded is redrawn, which writes none of them.

Is there a limit on how many photos I can add?

Image to PDF takes up to 50 images at a time, each up to 50 MB, in JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, GIF, BMP or AVIF. For more than 50, make two PDFs and join them with Merge PDF. Compress PDF then takes up to 10 PDFs at a time, each up to 100 MB and 2,000 pages.

Sources

Checked 15 Oct 2026. Every figure on this page is a setting or a rule of the two tools, read from their own code:

• Image to PDF: the page layouts, page sizes, limits (50 images, 50 MB each), the default image quality of 85, the page plan and the file name.
• Compress PDF: the three levels (100, 150 and 200 DPI) and the rule that caps a picture's long side at the page's long side in inches times the DPI.
• A4 is 210 × 297 mm, which is 595.28 × 841.89 points at 72 points to the inch.