Someone asks for your documents “as a PDF” and you have three photos of them on your phone. Or a client sends a 40-page PDF and you need page 12 as an image for a slide. Both directions of this conversion are asked for constantly, both are trivial once you know the two settings that matter (resolution and compression), and both are commonly done badly: a blurry PDF of a receipt that a bank rejects, or a 30 MB export of a single page. Here is how to do each one properly, and how to keep sensitive documents off other people’s servers while you do it.
Images to PDF
When you need it
Submitting scanned ID, receipts or forms; combining several photos into one file for email; creating a portfolio or lookbook; archiving screenshots; sending a multi-page document from a phone camera.
Doing it well
- Straighten and crop first. A photo of a page taken at an angle stays at an angle inside the PDF. Most phone cameras have a document mode that does this automatically; otherwise crop to the page edges.
- Order the pages. Drag them into sequence before converting. Reordering inside a PDF afterwards needs a separate tool.
- Choose page size and orientation. A4 or Letter to match the original; “fit to image” if the images are screenshots of varying sizes. Mixed portrait and landscape is fine as long as each page matches its image.
- Set margins to zero for scans (the page is the image) and a small margin for photos or artwork.
- Watch the file size. Five 12-megapixel photos make a 25 MB PDF. Most upload forms cap at 5–10 MB. Resize photos to about 1,600–2,000 px on the long side before converting; text stays perfectly legible and the file drops to 1–3 MB. The Bulk Image Resizer does this for a batch.
The Image to PDF & PDF to Image Converter accepts JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC, lets you drag pages into order, choose size and margins, and builds the PDF in your browser. The images are never uploaded, which matters when the images are your passport.
PDF to images
When you need it
Putting a PDF page into a slide, a website or a social post; extracting a chart or a diagram; previewing pages as thumbnails; sending a page to someone whose device won’t open PDFs; OCR workflows that want images as input.
The two settings
Resolution (DPI) decides how many pixels the page becomes. A PDF page has no fixed pixel size; it’s vector until rendered. Practical choices:
- 72–96 DPI: screen previews and thumbnails. An A4 page becomes about 600 × 850 px.
- 150 DPI: web images, slides, sharing. ~1,240 × 1,750 px. The default that suits most uses.
- 300 DPI: print, or when you’ll crop into a small region. ~2,480 × 3,500 px and a much larger file.
Format: PNG for pages that are mostly text, line art or diagrams (sharp edges, no compression artefacts). JPG for pages that are mostly photographs (smaller file). Never JPG for a page of small text; the artefacts make it look faxed.
Page selection
Export only the pages you need. A 40-page PDF at 300 DPI PNG is hundreds of megabytes; page 12 alone is a few. Then, if it’s going on the web, run it through the Image Compressor and convert to WebP with the Image Converter.
Text stays text, or doesn’t
This is the part that surprises people. A PDF made from images contains no text: you can’t search it, copy from it, or have a screen reader read it. A PDF exported from Word contains real text. Converting a text PDF to images destroys the text layer. If you need searchable output from photos, the step you want is OCR (optical character recognition), which recognises the letters in the image and adds an invisible text layer. Many scanner apps do this; it is a separate operation from conversion.
Privacy
The documents people convert most are the ones they should be most careful with: IDs, bank statements, contracts, medical letters. Any online converter that uploads the file has a copy on a server, at least briefly, and its retention policy is whatever it says it is. The ToolzDirectory converter runs in the browser using the PDF.js and canvas APIs; you can disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it still works, which is the test worth applying to any tool that handles your documents.
Quick reference
| Task | Setting |
|---|---|
| Scanned form to email as PDF | Resize photos to ~1,800 px, A4, zero margin, JPG inside PDF |
| Photo portfolio PDF | Resize to ~2,400 px, fit-to-image page size, small margin |
| PDF page for a slide | 150 DPI, PNG |
| PDF chart for print | 300 DPI, PNG, crop after |
| PDF page thumbnail | 72 DPI, JPG |
Frequently asked questions
Why is my PDF from photos so large?
The photos are full camera resolution. Resize them to around 1,600–2,000 px on the long side before converting; text remains legible and the file shrinks by 80–90%.
What DPI should I use to convert a PDF to an image?
150 for screen use and slides, 300 for print or when cropping small areas, 72 for thumbnails.
Can I search or copy text from a PDF made from images?
No. It contains only images. Run OCR to add a text layer if you need that.
Is it safe to convert my passport or bank statement online?
Only with a tool that processes files in your browser and never uploads them. Test by loading the page, going offline, and checking it still works.
Free, runs in your browser, nothing uploaded, no sign-up.
Keep reading
More from Image & Photo Tools.
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