How to turn phone photos into one PDF document

Need to send receipts for expenses, ID copies or signed pages? Your phone camera and a JPG-to-PDF converter are often all you need.

Taking good photos

• Lay the paper flat on a dark, plain surface so the edges stand out.
• Use daylight or even lighting, and avoid shadows from your phone.
• Hold the phone parallel to the page, not at an angle.
• Fill the frame with the page, and check that the text is sharp before moving on.

Making the PDF

1. Open JPG to PDF and add your photos.
2. Put them in order with the arrows.
3. Choose A4 or Letter with a small margin for documents, or "Same as image" for photos.
4. Convert and download.

DocNova reads each photo's orientation information, so pictures taken in portrait stay upright.

Keeping the file small

If the PDF must be under an upload limit, compress the photos first with the image compressor. A width of about 1,600 pixels is usually plenty for readable documents.

iPhone HEIC photos

iPhones may save photos as HEIC, which many browsers can't open. Set Camera, then Formats, to "Most Compatible" to save JPGs, or share or export the photo as JPG first.

Which page size should you choose?

• A4 or Letter: best for documents that may be printed, such as receipts for expense claims, signed pages and forms. Use A4 in most countries and Letter in the USA and Canada.
• Same as image: best for photos and screenshots shared on screen, because there are no white borders.

Order and naming

Put pages in the order the reader expects, for example the front of an ID before the back, or receipts by date. Give the final file a clear name such as "Expenses-October-2026.pdf" before you send it; a name like "document(3).pdf" gets lost in inboxes.

Privacy

Photos of IDs, bank cards and receipts contain personal information. DocNova converts images in your browser without uploading them. Before sending, consider covering numbers the recipient doesn't need, such as most digits of a card number.