How to scan a document with your phone and make a PDF

You no longer need a scanner. The camera on today's phones has more than enough resolution to make a document sharp and readable – as long as you photograph it properly. This guide shows how to turn paper into a tidy PDF: taking the pictures, ordering the pages and keeping the file size down.

1. Photograph the document properly

The quality of the PDF depends almost entirely on the photo. A few rules make a big difference:

• Light. Daylight next to a window is best. Avoid the flash – it creates glare on paper – and make sure your hand or phone doesn't cast a shadow on the document.
• A dark, flat surface. Paper on a dark table stands out from the background, so the edges are clean.
• Phone parallel to the paper. Shoot from directly above, not at an angle, so the lines of text aren't skewed.
• Fill the frame. The document should take up almost the whole picture, with a small margin around it.
• Focus. Tap the screen on the text and wait a moment before shooting. Hold the phone with both hands.
• Flatten the paper. Smooth out a folded sheet or hold down the corners.

2. Turn the photos into a PDF

1. Open JPG to PDF in your phone's browser.
2. Tap "Select images" and pick all the photos of the document from your gallery.
3. Check the order – you can drag pictures into place.
4. Keep the size at A4 (or Letter) and orientation on Auto. For documents you will print, choose small margins.
5. Tap "Convert to PDF" and download the finished document.

The images are converted on the phone itself and are not uploaded – important when you photograph an ID card, passport or contract. The tool also fixes photo orientation, so pages won't end up sideways.

3. Shrink the file if it is too large

A phone photo is 3–6 MB, so a five-page PDF can easily exceed 20 MB. Two solutions:

• Choose the "Smaller file" quality when creating the PDF. For text documents the difference in readability is unnoticeable.
• Run the finished PDF through Compress PDF. Scanned documents usually shrink by 60–90%.

Built-in phone scanners

Phones also have their own tools that detect the paper edges and correct perspective automatically:

• iPhone: the Notes app → camera icon → "Scan Documents".
• Android: the Google Drive app → "+" button → "Scan".

The result is a PDF that you can then combine with other documents using Merge PDF, compress or protect with a password.

Most common mistakes

• Blurry picture – the phone moved while shooting. Rest your elbows on the table.
• Shadow across the document – change your position relative to the light source.
• Cut-off edges – move the phone back; a bit of background is better than a missing stamp.
• Pages in the wrong order – check the order before creating the PDF, or fix it later with Organize PDF.

In short

Good light, a dark surface and the phone parallel to the paper – that is ninety percent of the job. Then turn the photos into one PDF, and compress it if it is too large. The whole process takes two or three minutes and needs neither a scanner nor an app.