Turn photos of documents into a scanned PDF

Take a photo of each page with your phone, add them here, and get a PDF that looks scanned: cropped to the page, straightened, and with the shadows and yellow tint gone. It all happens in your browser, so your documents are never uploaded.

Files stay on your device. Free, with no sign-up.

Scan to PDF tool

  1. 1Add photos of your pages
  2. 2Adjust
  3. 3Download

    How it works

    1. Add a photo of each page, in order. On a phone, choose Take Photo to use the camera.
    2. Check each page: the edges are found automatically, and you can drag the corners to fix them. Choose how the pages should look.
    3. Press Make PDF and download the scan.

    Photographing a page well

    Light from the side casts the shadow of your phone and hand across the page; light from above, or a window in front of you with the page flat on a table, works better. Keep the page flat, and make sure all four corners are in the picture.

    A dark table makes the page edges easy to find. On a white desk or a white bed sheet there is no edge to find, and you will need to drag the corners yourself.

    Frequently asked questions

    Are my files uploaded anywhere?

    No. Everything happens inside your browser, on your own device. Your files are never sent to a server, and you can confirm that in your browser's network tab. Close the tab and they're gone.

    How do I get the best result?

    Put the page on a plain, darker surface such as a table, in even light, and hold the phone straight above it so the whole page is in the picture. The page edges are found by looking for the bright paper against the darker background; if there is no clear edge, drag the four corners onto the corners of the page yourself.

    What do the looks do?

    Clean colour evens out the light and whitens the paper while keeping colours, which suits most pages and forms. Black and white gives crisp text like a photocopy and the smallest file. Grey keeps shading. Original only straightens the photo.

    Can I scan several pages into one PDF?

    Yes. Add all the photos, drag them into order in the file list (or use the arrows), and they become the pages of one PDF. Each page can have its own corners and turn.

    Can it read the text, so the PDF is searchable?

    No. The PDF holds pictures of the pages, like a scanner does. Making the text searchable needs OCR, which this tool does not do. For forms that only need to be read and sent, a clean scan is usually enough.

    My photo is sideways. What do I do?

    Phone photos usually carry their own rotation and are shown the right way up. If one still looks wrong, use Turn left or Turn right under the preview.

    Will the PDF be small enough to upload?

    Pages are saved at a size meant for reading and printing, usually a few hundred kilobytes each. Black and white gives the smallest files. If you need an exact size, run the result through Compress PDF.

    Is there a file size limit?

    Each file can be up to 100 MB, and up to 300 MB in total. Because the work happens on your device, very large files depend on your available memory. A desktop browser handles them best.

    More tools

    Guides