Combine Images into One PDF (JPG, PNG — Free)

Fourteen receipt photos for an expense report. Six scanned pages of a signed contract. A folder of screenshots for a bug report. Nobody wants to receive those as fourteen separate attachments — they want one PDF, pages in order. Here's how to combine images into one PDF in under a minute, plus the layout, ordering, and file-size decisions that make the difference between a clean document and a mess.

The 30-second method: JPG to PDF in the browser

Despite the name, JPG to PDF takes JPG, PNG, and WebP — and this is the step most people miss: you can drop many images at once, and they all become pages of a single PDF.

That's the whole job for most cases. The rest of this guide covers the judgment calls — orientation, size, phone workflows, and the offline alternatives.

Getting the page order right

Order is where multi-image PDFs go wrong most often. Two habits save you:

• Rename before uploading. Files named 01.jpg, 02.jpg, 03.jpg load in the right order automatically. Camera names like IMG_4821.jpg usually sort chronologically, which is often — but not always — what you want.
• Verify visually. The thumbnail cards exist so you can catch the receipt that got photographed twice or the page shot out of sequence. Ten seconds of scanning thumbnails beats regenerating the PDF.

If you later need to fix the order without re-uploading images, you can split the PDF into pages and re-merge them — but honestly, re-running the image tool with the right order is usually faster.

Portrait, landscape, and mixing the two

Real batches mix orientations: tall receipts, wide whiteboard photos, phone screenshots. What happens depends on your page-size choice:

• Fit-to-image: every page simply takes its image's orientation. Tall images make portrait pages, wide images make landscape pages. Nothing gets rotated or cropped. This is the safe default for mixed batches.
• A4 (fixed size): images are scaled to fit the page, so a landscape photo on a portrait A4 page gets white bars above and below. Acceptable for documents; ugly for photos.

A4 vs fit-to-image: which page size to pick

Rule of thumb: documents → A4, images-as-images → fit-to-image.

The phone workflow: camera → one PDF

No scanner needed. This works entirely in the phone's browser:

1. Photograph each page or receipt with the camera. Flat surface, even light, shoot from directly above — skip the artistic angles.
2. Open JPG to PDF in Safari or Chrome on the phone.
3. Tap the upload area → Photo Library → select all the shots.
4. Order, convert, download — the PDF lands in your Files/Downloads, ready to attach to email.

This is the fastest "scan and send" path that requires zero app installs and works identically on iPhone and Android. Modern phone photos run 2-5 MB each, so batches of roughly 5-10 shots fit the free 20 MB limit comfortably — more on shrinking below.

Offline alternatives: Windows Print-to-PDF and Mac Preview

Both desktop OSes can do this without any upload:

Windows (Photos app): select all the images in Explorer → right-click → Print → choose Microsoft Print to PDF as the printer → set one image per page → Print and pick a filename. The ordering controls are weak (it uses file-name order, no drag to reorder), but it's fully offline.

Mac (Preview): select the images in Finder → right-click → Open With → Preview → in Preview's sidebar, drag thumbnails into order → File → Print → Save as PDF (bottom-left PDF menu). Works well; just remember Print → Save as PDF, since "Export as PDF" only exports the selected image.

Both are fine for occasional use. The browser tool wins when you need drag-to-reorder, mixed page-size control, or you're on a phone, Chromebook, or someone else's computer.

Keeping the result small

Images are the heaviest thing you can put in a PDF. A 20-photo batch straight off a phone camera can produce a 60+ MB file — too big for most email servers. Two fixes:

• Before: resize photos to ~1500 px on the long edge before uploading. For receipts and documents, that's still perfectly legible.
• After: run the finished PDF through Compress — image-heavy PDFs typically shrink 50-80% with no visible loss at screen resolution. Full details in how to make a PDF smaller.

And if you need to attach the image-PDF to an existing document — say, receipts appended to an invoice PDF — combine them with the merge tool: how to merge PDFs without Adobe walks through it. For a deeper look at single-image conversion, there's also how to convert JPG to PDF.

Frequently asked questions

Can I mix JPG and PNG in the same PDF?

Yes — drop them in together. Each image becomes a page regardless of format; JPG, PNG, and WebP all work in one batch.

Is there a limit on how many images I can combine?

The free plan allows up to 20 MB total and 50 pages per PDF, with 10 operations per day — enough for most expense reports and scans. Pro ($9/mo) removes the limits.

Will there be a watermark on the PDF?

No. pdfty adds no watermarks on free or paid plans. If an "image to PDF" tool stamps your output, that's their upsell, not a technical necessity.

Do I need to create an account?

No sign-up required. Open the tool, drop the images, download the PDF. Files are auto-deleted from the server within 1 hour.

How do I combine images into a PDF on iPhone without an app?

Open JPG to PDF in Safari, tap upload, pick the photos from your library, reorder, convert. The PDF saves to the Files app. (iOS's built-in trick — select photos → Print → pinch out — also works but gives you no page-size control.)

Does converting images to PDF reduce their quality?

With fit-to-image sizing, the pixels are embedded as-is — no recompression, no quality loss. Quality only drops if you compress the PDF afterwards, and at screen resolution that loss is rarely visible.

My photos come out sideways in the PDF. Why?

Phone cameras sometimes record orientation in metadata instead of rotating the pixels. Some viewers respect it, some don't. Fix: open the offending photo in your OS viewer, rotate it once (which rewrites the pixels), save, and re-upload.

Can I add more images to a PDF I already made?

Convert the new images into their own PDF, then merge the two files — see how to merge PDFs without Adobe. Two 30-second operations.