Scan to PDF

How to scan documents to PDF with your phone

1. Put the document on a darker, plain surface in good light, then press Take photo (on a phone this opens the camera) or Add photos to use pictures you already have.
2. The page edges are found automatically. Drag the four corners onto the corners of the paper if they are not quite right; the photo is straightened as if scanned flat.
3. Pick a look: Enhanced whitens the paper and evens out shadows, Black & white gives a crisp photocopy look for text, or keep the original colours for photos and drawings.
4. Add more pages, put them in order with the arrows, and rotate any that are sideways.
5. Choose A4, Letter or fit-to-scan pages and a file size, then press Create PDF and download it.

A scanner app without the app

Scanner apps are popular because a phone photo of a document is crooked, shadowed and grey. This page does the same three fixes in your browser: perspective correction turns the tilted sheet back into a rectangle, lighting correction divides out the shadows and makes the paper white, and contrast stretching makes the text dark and readable. The pages are then packed into one PDF that you can email, upload to a government or university portal, or file away.

It is useful for signed contracts, receipts and expense claims, homework and handwritten notes, ID documents for applications, medical forms and letters. Because nothing is uploaded and there is no account, it is safe for sensitive paperwork, and there are no watermarks or page limits. For selectable, searchable text, run the finished PDF through OCR afterwards. Tips: shoot from straight above, fill most of the frame with the page, avoid flash glare, and use "Smallest" for portals with upload size limits.