Photos to one PDF under 200 KB

One PDF from phone photos

Many forms want a certificate, a marksheet or proof of address as a single PDF under a limit, often 200 KB. If you have only your phone, you have photos, not a PDF. This page turns them into one PDF that fits.

How the pages are made

Each photo becomes one page. The page takes the photo's shape, scaled so its longer side matches A4, so a photo of a portrait document gives an A4-sized portrait page and nothing is stretched. There are no white margins, which would only spend bytes on blank paper.

The photos are drawn at 150 dpi for A4, saved as JPEGs and put into one PDF. The finished file is measured, and the quality is adjusted until the PDF is the best it can be under 200,000 bytes. If that is not possible, the resolution steps down until it is. Black & white helps when the pages are printed text.

Taking good photos of documents

Flat and square. Lay the page on a dark table and hold the phone directly above it, so the page is a rectangle, not a trapezoid.

Even light. Daylight from a window, no flash, no shadow from your hand or phone.

Fill the frame. The page should take up as much of the photo as possible. Everything around it costs bytes.

In order. The PDF follows the order you pick the files, so pick page one first.

Limits

Up to 20 photos. HEIC from an iPhone works. Already have a PDF? Drop that instead, or see compress a PDF to 200 KB.

iPhone photos

HEIC, the format iPhones save photos in, opens directly; it is decoded in your browser. There is no need to change the camera setting or convert the photos first.

What it does not do

It does not straighten pages, find the edges of the paper or remove shadows. What you photograph is what goes on the page, so take the photos flat and in good light, and crop them in your phone's photo editor if the table shows around the page. A future version may find the page edges for you.

Reading the result

The result shows the PDF's size, the number of pages, the resolution and the JPEG quality. 150 dpi with quality above about 30% reads like the original on screen. If it had to go lower, zoom in on the smallest text before uploading, and try Black & white for printed pages.

What the portal checks

Portals check that the file is a PDF and under the size, sometimes the page count. A PDF made from photos is what any scanning app produces, so it is accepted wherever a scanned document is.