How do I scan a document to PDF with my phone for free?

Tap the box to open your camera, photograph each page, pick a filter, reorder the pages if needed, then press Save as Scanned PDF. On a desktop you choose existing photos instead. Nothing is uploaded — the whole thing runs inside the browser tab.

What do the three filters actually do?

Black & White forces near-white paper to pure white and dark ink to pure black while leaving the narrow middle band alone, so faint pencil and thin strokes survive. Grayscale converts to true grey and keeps all shading, useful for photographs and diagrams. Original Color leaves the photo untouched.

Which filter should I use?

Black & White for ordinary printed or handwritten paper — it kills the grey cast that room lighting puts on a page and gives the crisp copier look portals expect. Grayscale when the page has photographs or shaded charts. Color for anything where the colour carries meaning, such as a stamped or highlighted document.

Does it straighten pages or crop out the desk automatically?

No, and this is the honest limit. There is no edge detection, no perspective correction and no auto-crop — whatever is in your photo ends up on the page, desk included. Shoot straight down, fill the frame with the page, and crop first with the image cropper if you need tight edges.

Will the PDF text be searchable?

No. The output is an image-based PDF, exactly like what a flatbed scanner produces, so the text is a picture and cannot be searched or selected. Run the file through the OCR tool afterwards to add a real text layer while keeping the scanned appearance.

Can I combine several photos into one PDF and reorder them?

Yes. Add as many page photos as you need, in any number of goes, and each becomes one page. The up and down arrows move a page in the sequence, the cross removes one, and tapping a thumbnail opens it full screen so you can check you photographed the right thing.

Why are the PDF page dimensions so large?

Each page is sized from the photo’s pixel dimensions treated as PDF points, so a 4,000 pixel wide phone photo produces a page around 55 inches wide. It displays and prints fine because viewers scale to fit, but resize the photos first if a portal validates page size.

Can I use iPhone HEIC photos?

Photographing directly through the camera button works on any phone. Existing HEIC files only decode in Safari, so on Chrome or Firefox convert them with the HEIC to JPG tool first. Every page is re-encoded to JPEG at 90 percent quality regardless of what you put in.

Scan to PDF

Scan photos or images into a clean, print-ready PDF document online free — multi-page with auto-enhancement. Nothing leaves your device — fast and private.

Files never leave your deviceInstant — no upload waitFree, no sign-up

Snap camera photo or choose images100% private — turn photos into a clean scanned PDF document

or import from

Scanner Enhancement Filter

Scan to PDF turns phone photos of paper into a clean multi-page PDF. Ablack-and-white filter gives pages the crisp copier look that portals expect, and you can reorder pages before saving. Runs entirely in your browser — no upload, no app to install, no watermark.

How to scan a document

Tap the box to open your camera on a phone, or choose existing photos on a desktop. Add as many pages as you need, in as many goes as you like.
Pick a filter — Black & White is selected by default and is right for most paper.
Check and order the pages. Arrows move a page, the cross removes one, and tapping a thumbnail opens it full screen.
Press Save as Scanned PDF. The file downloads as scanned-document.pdf.

What each filter really does

The three enhancement modes.
Filter	What happens to the pixels	Use it for
Black & White (default)	Light tones forced to pure white, dark tones to pure black, mid-tones left as they are	Printed and handwritten paper, forms, receipts
Grayscale	True luminance conversion, all shading kept	Photographs, shaded diagrams, greyscale charts
Original Color	Nothing — the photo is embedded as shot	Stamps, highlighter, colour-coded documents

The Black & White filter is more careful than a plain threshold, and that detail matters. A simple threshold turns every pixel either black or white, which reliably destroys faint pencil and the thin parts of letters. Here the bright end is pushed to white and the dark end to black, but anarrow middle band is passed through untouched — so pale handwriting and light strokes survive while the grey cast that room lighting puts across a page disappears.

Photograph the page properly — nothing here will fix it

This is a filter-and-assemble tool, not a document scanner in the auto-cropping sense. There isno edge detection, no perspective correction and no deskew. Whatever is in your photo goes onto the page, including the desk, your fingers and the shadow of your phone. Getting the capture right is the whole job:

Shoot straight down, not at an angle. A tilted page cannot be squared up afterwards.
Fill the frame with the page. Cropping later costs resolution; framing tight costs nothing.
Use even, indirect light. A single overhead bulb puts a shadow across the page and a bright hotspot in the middle, and the filter will exaggerate both.
Avoid your own shadow. Standing over a page with a phone is exactly how you cast one across it.
Flatten the paper. A curled page produces a dark curve down one edge that reads as a smudge.

If a photo needs tightening, the image cropper handles it before you bring the file here, and image rotator fixes orientation.

Two things about the output

It is an image-based PDF. Every page is a picture, exactly as a flatbed scanner produces, so the text cannot be searched, selected or copied. That is fine for submitting a form and wrong for archiving something you will need to search later — run it through OCR PDFafterwards to add an invisible text layer while keeping the scanned look.

The pages are physically enormous. Each page is sized from the photo's pixel dimensions treated as PDF points, so a 4,000-pixel-wide photo becomes a page around 55 inches across. Viewers scale to fit so it looks and prints normally, but a portal that validates page size against A4 or Letter will reject it. Resize the photos with the image resizer first if you are submitting somewhere strict, or assemble with JPG to PDF instead, which offers real A4 and Letter page sizes.

How this compares to a scanner app

Getting paper into a PDF.
	ToolJiffy	Phone scanner app	Flatbed scanner
Photos leave your device	No	Often, for cloud sync	No
Install required	No	Yes	Hardware + driver
Auto-crop and deskew	No	Yes	Not needed
Watermark or page cap	Never	Common on free tiers	No
Built-in OCR	No — separate tool	Usually paid	Sometimes
Account required	No	Usually	No
Price	Free, unlimited	Free tier then subscription	Hardware cost

Honest summary: a scanner app will square up a page photographed at an angle, and this will not. What you get instead is no install, no account, no subscription, and documents that never leave the device — which for a passport, a payslip or a signed contract is usually the trade worth making.

Related tools

JPG to PDF assembles photos with proper A4 or Letter page sizes if you do not need the scanner filters. OCR PDF makes a scan searchable, andcompress PDF shrinks the result for upload limits. Once the file exists,organize PDF reorders or drops pages andmerge PDF joins it to other documents. iPhone HEIC files needHEIC to JPG first. To sign the finished document,sign PDF adds a signature without printing anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I scan a document to PDF with my phone for free?
Tap the box to open your camera, photograph each page, pick a filter, reorder the pages if needed, then press Save as Scanned PDF. On a desktop you choose existing photos instead. Nothing is uploaded — the whole thing runs inside the browser tab.
What do the three filters actually do?
Black & White forces near-white paper to pure white and dark ink to pure black while leaving the narrow middle band alone, so faint pencil and thin strokes survive. Grayscale converts to true grey and keeps all shading, useful for photographs and diagrams. Original Color leaves the photo untouched.
Which filter should I use?
Black & White for ordinary printed or handwritten paper — it kills the grey cast that room lighting puts on a page and gives the crisp copier look portals expect. Grayscale when the page has photographs or shaded charts. Color for anything where the colour carries meaning, such as a stamped or highlighted document.
Does it straighten pages or crop out the desk automatically?
No, and this is the honest limit. There is no edge detection, no perspective correction and no auto-crop — whatever is in your photo ends up on the page, desk included. Shoot straight down, fill the frame with the page, and crop first with the image cropper if you need tight edges.
Will the PDF text be searchable?
No. The output is an image-based PDF, exactly like what a flatbed scanner produces, so the text is a picture and cannot be searched or selected. Run the file through the OCR tool afterwards to add a real text layer while keeping the scanned appearance.
Can I combine several photos into one PDF and reorder them?
Yes. Add as many page photos as you need, in any number of goes, and each becomes one page. The up and down arrows move a page in the sequence, the cross removes one, and tapping a thumbnail opens it full screen so you can check you photographed the right thing.
Why are the PDF page dimensions so large?
Each page is sized from the photo’s pixel dimensions treated as PDF points, so a 4,000 pixel wide phone photo produces a page around 55 inches wide. It displays and prints fine because viewers scale to fit, but resize the photos first if a portal validates page size.
Can I use iPhone HEIC photos?
Photographing directly through the camera button works on any phone. Existing HEIC files only decode in Safari, so on Chrome or Firefox convert them with the HEIC to JPG tool first. Every page is re-encoded to JPEG at 90 percent quality regardless of what you put in.