Scan to PDF

About scanning to PDF

You do not need a scanner to make a clean PDF of a paper document. Your phone camera is enough. Take a photo of the page, and this tool does what a scanner app does:

• It finds the edges of the page in the photo,
• It straightens the page, so a photo taken at an angle becomes a flat, square page,
• It cleans it up: shadows and yellow light are removed and the paper becomes white.

Scan one page or many pages in a row, put them in the right order, and download one PDF. It works in the browser on Android phones, iPhones, tablets and computers. There is no app to install and no account.

Nothing is uploaded. The camera picture and your photos are processed on your own device. They never go to a server — not even ours.

Features

• Camera scanning — uses the back camera, with a big shutter button and the flash light when your phone has one
• Many pages in a row — take page after page without leaving the camera
• Automatic page edges — the page outline shows live in the camera view; drag the 4 corners to fix it, or use the whole photo
• Straight, flat pages — a page shot at an angle is turned into a straight page with the right shape
• 4 looks — Original, Enhanced (white paper, strong colours), Grayscale, and Black & white for receipts and text
• Reorder, rotate, retake, delete — drag the thumbnails or use the buttons
• Letter, A4 or the scan's own shape — with or without a small margin, and three quality levels
• PDF, JPG or ZIP — the PDF is ready before you click; you can also save one page as JPG or all pages as JPG files in a ZIP

The four looks

• Enhanced (the default) — the paper becomes white, shadows go away and colours stay. Good for most documents, forms with a coloured logo, and drawings.
• Black & white — only black and white, like a fax or a photocopy. Text is very clear and the file is small. The best choice for receipts, letters, contracts and printed text. Photos on the page will not look good in this mode.
• Grayscale — like Enhanced, but without colour. Good for pencil notes and pages with grey pictures.
• Original — the page is only straightened. The colours are exactly as the camera saw them.

The look you pick is remembered for the next pages. Use this look on all pages changes every page at once.

Common uses

• Receipts for expenses and tax returns — Black & white makes them easy to read
• Signed forms and contracts that someone asks you to send back as a PDF
• School work and homework — handwritten pages in one file for the teacher
• ID papers, letters and bills to keep a copy on your computer
• Notes from a whiteboard or a notebook
• Old printed recipes or a page from a book

Frequently asked questions

Is my document uploaded anywhere?

No. Everything happens in your browser: the camera picture, finding the edges, the clean-up and the PDF. Your pages never leave your device. The only things the page downloads are the tool's own program files, like the PDF engine.

Does it work on iPhone and Android?

Yes. Open this page in Safari on an iPhone or Chrome on Android, tap Scan with camera and allow the camera. If the camera does not open, tap Choose photos — your phone then lets you take a photo with its own camera app, which also works.

Can I make the text searchable?

Not in this tool — it makes a PDF of pictures, like a normal scanner. To make the text searchable and copyable, open the PDF in OCR PDF afterwards. It reads the text and adds it to the PDF.

The edges were not found. What can I do?

Tap Corners and drag the 4 round handles onto the corners of the page. Edges are found best when the page lies on a darker table or floor and the whole page is in the photo. A white page on a white table is hard to see, for people and for the tool.

Why is the camera picture less sharp than my phone's photos?

In a browser the camera gives a video picture, which on many phones is smaller than a real photo. For the sharpest scan of small print, take the photos with your phone's camera app and add them with Choose photos — they get the same edge finding and clean-up.

How many pages can one PDF have?

There is no fixed limit. Each page is processed on your device, so a phone may get slow after about 30–50 pages. Choose Smaller file for long documents.

Which page size should I choose?

Letter is the paper size in the US and Canada, A4 in most other countries. The scan is placed on the page without stretching. Fit to the scan makes each PDF page the same shape as the scanned page — good for receipts, which are long and narrow.

Good to know

• The pages are made at up to 3000 pixels on the long side. Best quality keeps that size; Balanced and Smaller file make the PDF lighter
• Photos from a file can be JPG, PNG, WebP or HEIC (iPhone photos)
• The flash light button shows only when your phone and browser allow it (most Android phones in Chrome)
• To join a scan with other PDFs, use Merge PDF. To put photos into a PDF as they are, without straightening, use Image to PDF
• Your page size, margin, quality and look are remembered in this browser

How to use it

• Tap Scan with camera and allow the camera — or tap Choose photos to use photos you already have
• Hold the phone above the page; when the green outline fits the page, tap the round shutter button
• Take the next pages the same way, then tap Done
• Check each page: tap Corners to move the corners, Rotate to turn it, or Retake to take it again
• Pick a look — Enhanced or Black & white for documents
• Drag the thumbnails to change the order, then choose the page size
• Tap Download PDF — the file is ready as soon as the pages are done