About this builder

This site does one thing: it turns photographs into a PDF with pages in it. A page is a sheet of paper of a stated size, with a margin, and the photographs are arranged onto it. That sentence is the whole product, and every decision here follows from it.

Why it is a wizard rather than a page of switches

Assembling a document has an order to it — which photographs, in what sequence, on what paper, at what size. Four steps say so out loud. The rail is a map rather than a gate, though: every step is reachable from every other one and the save button is on all four, because somebody coming back to widen a margin should not have to walk through the photographs again to get there.

Why nothing is uploaded

Not as a feature, as an absence. There is no server here to upload anything to — the site is a set of static files, and the document is written by code running in the tab you have open. The practical consequence is that a mark sheet, a passport page or a bank statement never becomes somebody else’s copy. The privacy page sets out exactly what does and does not happen to a file you open.

What it deliberately is not

It is not a PDF editor. It can open a PDF you already have to put photos before, after or between its pages — those pages are copied in unchanged — but it does not change the text on a page, split a PDF, fill forms or sign. It does not put searchable text onto a page or find text inside one: the photo pages it writes are pictures. Its document mode squares up and whitens a photographed sheet of paper, because that is part of making a readable page; it does not retouch photographs. What it gets right is the paper, the margin, the order and the file size, which is what the form portal at the other end is actually checking.

Software it uses

The document engine, the TIFF reader, the PDF page copier and document mode were written for this site. iPhone HEIC photos are decoded with libheif-js, a WebAssembly build of libheif, used unmodified under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3. It is loaded as a separate file only when a HEIC photo arrives, so it can be replaced by any compatible build; its source code is available at that link. The page is built with Next.js and React (MIT licence).

Who makes it

ConvertPhotosToPDF is a small, independent site, built and run by the people who answer its contact page. There is no account to make, nothing you have to install, and no paid version holding a feature back.