Scan to PDF

Scan to PDF turns photos of paper into proper scanned pages. A photo of a letter, receipt or form is usually taken at an angle, with a table round it and a shadow across it. This tool finds the edges of the sheet, squares it up as if the camera had been straight above it, evens out the lighting and puts the pages together in one PDF, ready to email or upload.

It is built for the jobs that otherwise need a scanner or a scanning app: sending a signed form back, keeping receipts for your tax return, handing in homework, or saving a contract. You can drag any corner if the automatic edges are off, pick a look for each page (clean colour, remove shadows, crisp black and white, greyscale or the original), turn pages, change their order and choose A4, US Letter or pages shaped like the scan itself.

Everything is done by your own browser. The photos never leave your phone or computer, and there is no account to make and no watermark on the pages.

1. Tap “Choose photos”. On a phone you can pick photos you already took or, in most browsers, take new ones with the camera app from the same menu.
2. Each photo becomes a page with its edges found. Tap a page to open it, and drag the round handles onto the paper’s corners if needed.
3. Choose a Look: Clean colour, Remove shadows, Black & white, Greyscale or Original. Use “Turn left” or “Turn right” for sideways pages.
4. Reorder pages with the arrows under each thumbnail, then pick the page size and margin.
5. Press “Make PDF”, then “Download PDF”. Tick “Also save each page as a JPG” first if you want pictures too.

• Automatic page edge detection, with draggable corner handles (mouse, touch or arrow keys).
• Perspective correction: slanted photos become straight, rectangular pages.
• Five looks: Clean colour, Remove shadows, Black & white document, Greyscale and Original.
• Black & white uses an adaptive threshold, so shadows and uneven light don’t turn into black patches.
• Turn, reorder and remove pages; apply one look to every page in one tap.
• A4, US Letter or “Same as scan” pages, with or without a margin; a page photographed at an angle is squared to the exact A4 or Letter shape when it is close to it.
• Optional JPG of every page, downloaded together as a ZIP.
• Handles iPhone HEIC photos and sideways phone pictures (pages are redrawn upright).

• Put the paper on a dark, plain surface: the more it stands out, the better the edges are found.
• Shoot from above in even light, and keep your own shadow off the page; “Remove shadows” can fix a gentle one.
• Black & white gives the smallest, sharpest PDF for text. Use Clean colour for anything with stamps, signatures in blue ink or photos.
• Fill most of the frame with the paper, but leave a little table showing all round so every corner can be found.
• Need searchable text afterwards? Run the finished PDF through PDF OCR.