Putting a PDF together to send

A visa application wants one PDF with the form, your passport and three months of bank statements; an expenses claim wants the receipts; a landlord wants the signed lease back. These tools turn photos into pages, put PDFs together and get the result under the upload limit, all in your browser, so documents like these aren’t uploaded anywhere. If a step puts a password on the file, the note below applies.

Take care with secrets. This runs only in your browser: what you enter isn't uploaded, stored or put in a link, and the page is built so that it can't send it anywhere else. Your browser's extensions and other software on your device can still see what's on screen, so use a device you trust and real secrets only when you need to. Disconnecting from the internet once the page has loaded gives the most protection. Use is at your own risk: see the terms.

1. Get the photos right first

Phone photos are usually 3 to 5 MB each, so a dozen receipts make a PDF too big for most upload forms. Open each one in Image Convert / Resize, save it as JPEG at quality 0.85 with a Width of 1600: text stays readable and each photo drops to a few hundred KB. Crop cuts away the table it was lying on, and Rotate fixes one taken sideways. The copies have no location data either.

If a photo shows more than the form needs, such as another card’s number or someone else’s address on the same letter, box it out in Photo Censor with A solid box before it goes in.

2. Turn the pictures into pages

Choose them all under Pictures into a PDF in PDF Images. Each becomes one page, in file name order, and scan 2 comes before scan 10, so name them in the order you want. Set Page size to A4 or US Letter and a Margin of about 10 mm, and the pages print like a normal document instead of at odd photo sizes.

No scanner? Choose Take photos instead, point the camera at each page and choose Take a photo; every shot is added to the list. Tick Clean up new pictures as documents (grey, contrast stretched) first and a page photographed on a desk comes out as a plain grey scan, which also makes the PDF smaller. Photos taken this way stay in your browser and nothing is recorded.

3. Put the whole thing together

Choose the form, the PDF of photos and anything else in PDF Pages, and put them in order with ↑ and ↓. Then:

• Pages to keep, in order: 1-3, 7, 5 keeps and reorders pages, and anything left out is dropped, such as the bank’s blank last page or its terms.
• Pages to rotate: for a page scanned sideways.

Save as one PDF gives the single file the form asks for. To send just part of a long document, keep only those pages, or use Save each page as a PDF for one file a page.

4. Still too big?

PDF Pages copies pages as they are and doesn’t compress them, and most of a large PDF’s size is usually its pictures. Make a PDF smaller in PDF Images scales them down and saves them again as JPEGs: 1600 pixels and Balanced suit email, and the message says how much it saved. Open the copy to check the pictures are still clear. If it hardly shrinks, the size comes from fonts or drawings: export the document again from the app that made it, with its smaller-file option.

5. Number the pages and mark a draft

A long application or contract is easier to discuss when every page has a number. Choose the PDF in PDF Stamp, leave Add page numbers ticked and set Format to Page {n} of {total}. Type 2-end in Pages to stamp and tick Leave the first page unnumbered (it still counts) to keep a cover page clean. To mark a copy that isn’t final, tick Add a text watermark and use DRAFT with Repeated across the page. Stamp and save gives a new copy and leaves the original alone. A watermark is only drawn on top of the page, so it doesn’t hide or remove anything, and anyone with a PDF editor can take it off.

6. Check it before it goes

Open the finished PDF in PDF Info & Clean. It shows the author’s name, the apps it passed through and any earlier saved versions inside it, and Save a clean copy removes them while the pages stay the same. A black box drawn over text in a PDF doesn’t remove the text underneath: Before you share a photo or document covers what else files give away.

If the PDF has to be signed digitally, sign it last: any change to a signed PDF, cleaning included, stops the signature verifying.

If the file holds private details and goes by email, open Protect / Unlock PDF, choose Protect it with a password, type an Open password twice and choose Protect and save. Send the password by another route, such as a text message, not in the same email. Use a long password, and keep the original: a forgotten one can’t be recovered. The print and copy options only ask readers to comply, and some ignore them; only the open password keeps people out.

7. A PDF that won’t open

If a reader says the file is damaged, often because a download stopped part-way or an attachment was changed on the way, choose it in Repair PDF and see which of its two ways worked: Rebuild keeps the text and pictures, and Pictures of the pages looks the same but the text can no longer be selected. Choose Save a new PDF and open the copy to check every page is there before relying on it; a file cut short has lost what was in the missing part, and asking whoever sent it for a fresh copy is still best.

8. Taking things out of a PDF you’ve been sent

• A photo or logo: PDF Images saves every picture at its full size, JPEGs exactly as they’re stored, which is sharper than a screenshot.
• A few pages: PDF Pages with just those pages in Pages to keep.
• The words, to paste somewhere else: PDF Text gives the text with each paragraph on one line (Join the lines of a paragraph), as Plain text or as Markdown with the larger lines made headings. Pages takes a range such as 1-3, 7; Copy or Save as a file when it looks right.
• The text of a scanned page, which can’t be selected: open the PDF in Image to Text (OCR), which reads it a page at a time, then check the numbers, which are where it most often slips.
• A page as a picture, for a slide or a web page: Pages as pictures in PDF Images.