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Scan documents with your phone

A phone makes a usable scan if you get two things right: even light and a square-on shot. Everything after that is mechanical. Most phones already have a document scanner built into an app you have, and if you photograph the pages instead, they become one PDF in a single step.

HEIC to PDF

What separates a scan from a snapshot

A scan is flat, evenly lit, square to the page and cropped to the paper. A snapshot of a document is none of those, which is why an office rejects it. The difference is not resolution. It is geometry and light.

Put the sheet on a plain surface. Stand so the light comes from the side rather than from behind you, because your own shadow across the page is the single most common fault. Hold the phone parallel to the paper and fill the frame with the sheet.

Use the scanner your phone already has

Most phones ship with a document scanner inside an app you already use. It finds the edges of the sheet, corrects the perspective so a page shot at a slight angle comes out rectangular, and writes a PDF directly. That is better output than a plain photograph, and it costs nothing to try first.

Where it lives depends on the phone and the version of its software, so look in the camera app and in the notes or files app rather than following a menu path from a screenshot that may be two versions old. The Samsung guide covers that family specifically.

If you photograph the pages instead

A plain photograph works, with the same rules about light and angle. Shoot every sheet in order and do not stop halfway to check, because counting at the end is faster than working out later which of forty pictures is missing.

Watch the format. Recent iPhones save photographs as HEIC by default. Use HEIC to PDF for those photos. It decodes the primary still image locally and keeps its pixel dimensions. Use Images to PDF for JPG and PNG files.

Turn the pictures into one document

Open Images to PDF, add every picture at once, and drag the thumbnails into the right order before you build. One image becomes one page. Do not rely on the file names, because they sort as text and put IMG_10 ahead of IMG_2.

Nothing is resampled. The pixels the camera produced go into the PDF exactly as they are, and the finished file is reopened and checked so that every image kept its original dimensions before you download it.

Page size is a real choice

Match makes each page the size of its own photograph, so the document has pages of slightly different shapes. A4 or Letter puts every picture on a standard sheet, scaled to fit and centred, and a landscape shot turns the page landscape rather than shrinking into a portrait sheet.

Choose A4 or Letter for anything that will be printed, filed or sent to an office. Match is for documents that will only ever be read on a screen. Margins are none, a quarter inch, or half an inch, and half an inch is the safe choice for anything that goes near a printer.

The file will be large

Forty photographs from a modern phone make a PDF around 150 MB, which no mail system accepts. Compress the finished document as one step rather than shrinking each picture first, so the images pass through encoding once.

Photographed paper is the easy case. On the public bench run, documents of the scan type met their requested size on 88.9% of cases, against 20.0% for pages that are mostly real text, because a picture of a page has slack in it that text does not.

Check it before you send it

Open the finished PDF and read one line on every page at normal zoom. If you cannot read a line, neither can the person receiving it, and reshooting one sheet now costs less than being asked for the whole document again.

The multi-page guide covers building longer documents, and the scanning hub lists the rest of the cluster, including passports and other identity pages.

Questions people ask

How do I scan a document with my phone without buying an app?
Use the document scanner already built into your phone's camera, notes or files app. If you cannot find one, photograph the pages in even light and turn them into a PDF with Images to PDF, which runs in the browser tab.
Why do my phone photos get refused as scans?
Usually because of shadow across the page or a shot taken at an angle, not because of resolution. Light the sheet from the side, hold the phone parallel to the paper and fill the frame with the page.
Can I turn iPhone HEIC photos into a PDF here?
Yes. HEIC to PDF converts each file's primary still image in the browser and keeps its decoded pixel dimensions.
Do the photos lose quality when they become a PDF?
No. Nothing is resampled, so the pixels the camera produced are the pixels in the PDF. The finished file is checked to confirm every image kept its original dimensions.

Do it now

The tool runs in this browser. Your file never leaves the machine, and the result is checked before you download it.

HEIC to PDF

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