Everyday PDF jobs: get a pile of papers ready to send

Start here: the photos become a PDF

Your phone’s camera is the scanner. Photograph each page flat, in daylight, filling the frame. Then open this tool in the phone’s browser, tap the drop zone, pick the photos from the camera roll, and they come back as 1 PDF with 1 photo per page. On a laptop, drop the photos in, or drop a whole folder: every picture in it is picked up. The PDF leaves out the camera’s GPS position, device and time, so it does not say where the photos were taken.

getPDF does not scan. The camera app does that part, and it does it well: a phone photo at 3000 px across is plenty for an A4 page. What getPDF does is everything after the shutter.

The chain, step by step

1. Photograph everything. One photo per page, flat, straight, in daylight. Re-shoot a blurry page now; it costs 5 seconds here and a rejection later.

2. Photos to PDF. The tool above turns the camera roll batch into a PDF. Papers that already are PDFs (an emailed invoice, a downloaded certificate) skip this step and join at the merge. The full picture-to-PDF story, including HEIC and PNG, is in Pictures to PDF.

3. Merge in reading order. The order the recipient expects: ID first, newest pay slip next, references last, or whatever the request names first goes first. Put the files in that order with Up and Down in the list and check it before moving on; Organise PDF moves single pages inside the result, and Reverse the order fixes a stack the scanner fed backwards. Rotating sideways scans and dropping blank backs belongs here too; the page jobs are mapped in Organise PDF pages.

4. Compress under the cap. The upload page states its number: 4 MB per file on the US visa portal, 4 or 5 MB on Canada’s IRCC (checked on 11 October 2026), often 100 KB to 2 MB on exam and tax forms. Type it as the size target, and the tool keeps the best quality that fits. 5 phone photos of 12 megapixels, 14.7 MB as a PDF, come out at 1.1 MB on a 2 MB target: the tool settled at 150 dpi, enough to read printed text on screen, because a gentler setting would not fit. A file already under the target comes back untouched. Why that works, and when it stops working, is in Make a PDF smaller.

5. Name it, check it, send it. “jane-cooper-lease-2026.pdf” beats “scan_0001.pdf” in every inbox: the file name is what shows in the recipient’s download folder and in the portal’s file list. Then run the checklist below once, and upload.

The 3 jobs behind most of these searches

The chain above is the spine. What varies is the extra step, and the 3 jobs below cover most piles.

Portal uploads with size caps. An apartment application, a visa portal, an insurance claim. The chain runs as written, with 2 variations. Some portals want 1 merged pack; visa portals usually want separate files per document, so the merge step becomes “1 PDF per document” instead of “1 PDF for everything”. And when the pack is full of salary data or ID pages, add a password with Protect PDF before sending, and tell the recipient the password by phone or a second channel, never in the same email. What a password does and does not stop is in PDF privacy and protection.

School and office packs. Thesis chapters, lecture scans for the class chat, the papers for a meeting. Here the merge is the main event, and 2 steps join the chain: page numbers stamped after merging, so they run continuously and “page 23” means the same thing to everyone, and OCR on anything scanned, so the people you share with can search inside the file instead of scrolling 40 pages. How a scan becomes searchable text is in Scanned PDF to searchable.

Forms to fill and sign. Onboarding paperwork, a lease, a claim form. The chain starts from a file someone sent you rather than from the camera roll. Fill the form where it has real fields, sign on screen, then flatten before returning it, so the fields and the signature become part of the page and cannot shift in transit. The whole route, including what to do with a flat scan that only looks like a form, is in Sign and fill a PDF.

The whole chain on a phone

At least half of these jobs start and end on a phone, and the chain is built for that. Nothing here needs an app store.

1. Photograph the pages with the camera app.
2. Open getpdfs.app in the phone’s browser and pick the tool. The drop zone becomes a tap target; tapping it opens the camera roll.
3. The finished file saves to the phone’s downloads. Each tool hands its result to the next one the same way: download, then pick that file in the next tool.
4. Upload to the portal from the browser, or attach from downloads in the mail app.

The common phone trap is size in the other direction: the photo is 4 MB and the portal wants 500 KB. The compressor takes a target in KB or MB, so type the portal’s number and read the result in digits; it counts 1 KB as 1,000 bytes, the stricter reading, so the file passes whichever way the portal counts. If a page comes back unreadable at the target, re-shoot that 1 page closer and flatter rather than fighting the compression.

And the privacy point matters most on a phone, where “upload” is the default of every app: these tools run on your device. Run a tool once, turn on flight mode, and it still works.

Before you send: the 1-minute check

Open the finished file once, as the recipient will, and tick 4 things:

1. Page order. Scroll the whole file. The page that is missing or doubled is always the one you did not look at.
2. The worst page at 100 percent. Zoom to the densest page, usually the oldest or most crumpled scan. If you cannot read the numbers, the recipient cannot either.
3. The size, in digits. Read the actual number against the cap. “About 2 MB” and 2.3 MB are different files to a portal with a 2 MB cap.
4. The file name. Your name, what it is, the year. If you send several files, name them so they sort: “jana-cermak-payslip-2026-08.pdf” sorts itself, “IMG_4411.pdf” does not.

This list is 1 minute of work and it is the difference between “received, thanks” and a second round trip through the portal.

What getPDF does not do

Three honest limits, so you plan around them instead of discovering them at the deadline.

It does not scan. The phone’s camera does the capturing; getPDF takes over after the shutter. A dedicated scan app can de-skew and crop automatically, and if you already use one, keep using it and bring the output here.

It cannot rename files in bulk. Naming is manual, 1 file at a time, as you save. For a 3-file application that is fine; for 200 archive files, name them in your file manager.

It cannot know a portal’s rules. The cap, the allowed formats, whether protected files are accepted, 1 pack or separate files: the portal’s own page states its spec, and that spec always wins over any guide, this one included. When the upload fails, read the portal’s error before changing the file.

The situations, mapped

Each of these is its own guide, with the chain adjusted and the real numbers for that job. They publish here as they go live; the list below names the situations so you know which page you are waiting for.

• The apartment application pack: pay slips, ID and references, 1 small PDF, password on top.
• The job application: CV and certificates merged under 2 MB and named for the recruiter.
• The thesis: chapters merged, page numbers from page 2, under the faculty’s cap.
• The visa upload set: separate files per document, strict caps, plain names.
• The expense report: a week of receipt photos, merged by date, OCRed for finance.
• The private sale pack: service history merged, your address and IBAN redacted first.
• Tax season: a year of receipts into 12 monthly searchable files.
• Lecture scans for the class: searchable and small enough for the chat.
• Onboarding paperwork: fill, sign, flatten, return the same day.
• A lease ready for signing: assembled, filled, signature lines marked.
• The family archive: scan habits, OCR and names that still make sense in 2036.
• Meeting papers: 1 numbered pack plus a 4-per-page handout.
• The insurance claim: damage photos kept sharp, forms and receipts kept small.

Whichever pile is yours, the spine is the same: photos to PDF, merge in order, compress to the cap, name it, check it once, send.