Phone photos to PDF — the right way to bundle receipts, IDs, and contracts
Tomoda HinataTool author & maintainerPublished Apr 26, 20269 min read
Your iPhone's Files app and Android's Print-to-PDF can wrap one photo into a PDF, but neither lets you reorder pages, batch process 20 receipts, strip EXIF, or hold the output below the corporate-mail 10 MB ceiling. This guide is the in-browser flow that does all four — drop, reorder, downscale, build, attach.
Tools used in this guide
When the OS print-to-PDF is enough — and when it isn't
iPhone Files lets you long-press an image and pick 'Create PDF', which works for one image and produces a giant uncompressed file. Android's print dialog lets you 'Save as PDF' from the gallery, but the page order matches the gallery's sort order — which you cannot reorder. Both also embed the original EXIF block in the PDF: the recipient gets the camera serial number and, on default settings, the GPS coordinates of where you took the receipt.
Resize before wrapping
PDF wraps photos as compressed image streams; it does not re-encode them. A 12 MP iPhone photo (≈3 MB JPG) embedded as-is into a PDF stays ≈3 MB inside the PDF. Resize to 1600 px on the long edge and re-encode to JPG quality 85 first — every photo drops to ≈250 KB before the PDF even begins, which is where 90% of the size win lives.
Reorder pages, set the page size
The browser tool shows a thumbnail grid; drag tiles to reorder. Pick A4 portrait (210×297 mm) for office printers; US Letter (216×279 mm) for North America; or 'fit each page to the photo' if the recipient is just going to view on screen. A4 portrait at 96 DPI is roughly 794×1123 px, so a 1600-px-long-edge photo fits comfortably with margin.
Strip EXIF before, not after
PDF preserves the EXIF block of every embedded image. Stripping EXIF AFTER PDF generation is more work than stripping each photo first. Run the EXIF-remove tool on the resized photos, then build the PDF. The result is byte-identical to running them separately, with the privacy benefit baked in.
Size budget — keep it under 10 MB
Most corporate email gateways reject PDFs over 10 MB. The recipe above (1600 px / Q85, 30 photos, A4 portrait, EXIF stripped) lands at 4–6 MB for typical receipt scans. If you have 50+ photos or photos with very high-frequency detail (handwritten ledgers, dense diagrams), drop to 1200 px / Q80 to stay under the cap.
Steps
About 3 minResize and EXIF-strip
Run the resize tool to 1600 px JPG Q85, then the EXIF remover. Both batch up to 30 files in the browser.
Drop into the PDF builder
Open the image-to-PDF tool and drag the cleaned files in.
Reorder pages
Drag thumbnails into the right order; set A4 portrait as the page size.
Build and download
Click 'Build PDF' — the bar fills page by page; download the result.
Frequently asked questions
Can I add a cover page or title?
Not in the basic flow. For a cover page, generate a PNG of the title text first (any text-to-image tool) and include it as the first photo in the bundle.
Will the PDF be searchable?
Not by default — the photos go in as raster images. For OCR'd, searchable PDFs run an OCR pass first and import the resulting per-page text layer separately.
Does the order match how I dropped them?
Initially yes (drop order = page order). Reorder by dragging thumbnails before clicking 'Build'.
Can I add a password to the PDF?
Yes — the tool offers an encryption checkbox with a password field. The PDF will require the password to open.
Is HEIC supported as input?
Yes — HEIC photos are converted to JPG quality 85 inline before embedding.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. Resize, EXIF strip, and PDF build all run in your browser via WebAssembly.
Try it now
Combine multiple images into a single PDF
Image to PDF Converter