Combine photos into one PDF, in the right order the first time

Combine them now

1. Drop every photo at once, or click to choose them. JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, TIFF, GIF and BMP all work, mixed in 1 batch.
2. Check the list. The PDF follows it from top to bottom. Use Up and Down on a photo to move it 1 place, and Remove to drop one.
3. Pick the page. A4 is the default; US Letter, Legal, A3, A5 or “Same as the picture” are the others. Orientation Auto, margin 0 mm and Fit suit most photo sets.
4. Make the PDF and download. The file is named after the first photo, for example 01-and-39-more.pdf.

We checked what goes into the file with 4 test photos, 7.4 MB of JPEGs in total: the PDF came out only about 640 bytes per page larger than the photos themselves, because each JPEG’s picture data is copied in as it is, not squeezed again. The result card says so (“4 JPEGs embedded as they are, no re-encoding”).

Does the PDF give away where the photos were taken?

No. A phone stores more in each JPEG than the picture: the GPS position, the phone model and the time it was taken. JPG to PDF leaves those camera details out and copies only the picture data, so a PDF of your flat, your car or your children does not carry a map position. The result card counts it (“Left out the camera details of 4 photos (location, device, time); the pictures themselves are untouched”). Phone photos with those details can therefore make a PDF a little smaller than the photos together. And since the tool runs on your device, the photos are not uploaded anywhere on the way.

The sorting trap: 1, 10, 11, 2

Photos named photo-1.jpg to photo-12.jpg can arrive in this order: 1, 10, 11, 12, 2, 3. Some programs compare names letter by letter, and “1” followed by “0” comes before “2”. File managers on Windows and Mac usually sort numbers the way people do, but the order in which a browser hands files to a web page depends on the browser and the system, so do not count on it. Dropping the whole folder is the exception: the tool sorts a dropped folder’s files the way people count, so scan-9 comes before scan-10.

Leading zeros remove the problem everywhere:

Use as many digits as the largest number has: 2 digits up to 99 photos, 3 up to 999.

For a set of 10 or 15, renaming is not worth it: drop them, then fix the order with Up and Down. For 60 photos from a trip, rename first.

Portrait and landscape in one file

With orientation on Auto, each page turns to match its photo: a landscape photo gets a landscape A4 page, a portrait photo a portrait one. In our test set of 2 landscape and 2 portrait photos, the pages came out landscape, portrait, landscape, portrait. On screen that looks natural; printed, every page still comes out of the printer the same way, and the landscape ones are read turned.

Set orientation to Portrait and every page is portrait; the landscape photos are fitted across the width with white space above and below. That suits a set that will be printed and bound.

Phone photos carry a note that says which way up they were held, and the converter follows it, so a photo that stood upright on your phone stands upright in the PDF. If one still comes out sideways (some apps strip that note), turn the page afterwards with Rotate PDF.

Fit shows the whole photo inside the page. Fill covers the page and crops what sticks out. Stretch fills the page and distorts the photo, which is rarely what you want for people and places.

Forgot a photo?

You do not have to start again:

1. Convert the missing photo on its own, the same way.
2. Open Merge PDF, drop the combined PDF and the new 1-page PDF, and merge.
3. The new page is now last. Open Organise PDF, move it to its place with Up and Down, and press Apply.

Or, since nothing is uploaded and conversion is quick, drop the whole set again with the missing photo in place. The page order guide covers moving pages in longer files.

How big will the PDF be?

About as big as the photos together, because they go in unchanged. Phone photos are often 2 to 5 MB each, so 40 of them at 4 MB make a PDF of roughly 160 MB. That is fine for an archive and far too big for email: Gmail stops at 25 MB.

To send it, run the PDF through Compress PDF, which re-encodes the photos at a resolution that suits a screen and shows the size before and after. Make a PDF smaller explains how far photos can shrink before it shows.

What this does not do, yet

• No sort by date taken. The order is the list’s order. Name the files by date (2026-10-03-01.jpg) or number them, or move them by hand.
• No drag and drop in the list. Photos move 1 place per click of Up or Down. For a set in the wrong order end to end, renaming is faster.
• 1 photo per page. For 4 or 6 photos on a sheet, convert first, then use N-up on the PDF.
• No compression on the way in. Converting keeps the photos as they are; compressing is a separate, deliberate step.

For a set that is all iPhone photos, HEIC to PDF does the same job, and the pictures to PDF guide covers every other picture job.