The front and back of a card, on one sheet
Banks, landlords, colleges and employers ask for a copy of an identity card with both sides on one page. The photocopier answer is to lay the card down twice; the phone answer is two photos and a PDF that puts them one above the other. This page opens already set up for that: A4 portrait, two to a page, a 6 mm gap between them and a 15 mm margin all round, and Fit, so neither photo loses an edge.
A worked example: two 1712 × 1080 photos of the two sides of a card, with Life size on, made one A4 page of 40,939 bytes. Read back from the file, each photo is placed 85.6 mm wide, and the receipt said both were whole.
Life size, and why it is a switch
Fit makes each photo as large as its half of the page allows, which is easiest to read on a screen. A printed copy is a different job: whoever checks it may hold it next to the card. Life size places each photo in a rectangle exactly 85.6 by 54 millimetres — the ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1 size, which is the size of a bank card, a PAN card and a PVC Aadhaar card — turned to match the photo, so the printout is the card’s own size at 100 % scale. For it to look right, the photo should show only the card: turn on document mode, let it find the card’s corners, and choose “Looks like ID card — match its proportion” if it offers it.
Proof that nothing was cut off
After saving, the receipt states whether both photos are whole. The same check runs before the save: if either photo is in Fill or zoomed, the Save step says part of the card is missing. Everything else about the file — page size in millimetres and inches, the resolution each photo prints at, the size of the file — is read back out of the finished bytes, not assumed. For more than two to a page, use several photos per page; to clean up a photographed document first, scan picture to PDF opens with document mode on.
Questions about two photos on one PDF page
Will the card print at real size?
Switch on Life size (85.6 × 54 mm) on the Pages step and each photo is placed at the size of an ID-1 card — the size of a PAN card or a PVC Aadhaar card — so a printout at 100 % matches the card. Crop each photo to the card first with document mode, so the card fills its rectangle. No authority is known to require this; it simply makes the copy match the original.
Is anything cropped off the card?
No. The page opens on Fit, which keeps every photo whole, and the receipt after saving says “Both photos are whole (Fit). Nothing was cropped.” If you switch to Fill or zoom a frame, the Save step warns that part of the card is missing before you save.
Are my photos uploaded?
No. The card photos are laid out and written into the PDF by this browser. An identity card is exactly the kind of photo that should not be sent to a server to be put on a page, and here it never is.
What does the PDF contain?
One A4 page with the two photos on it, and nothing else: no file names, no camera or location data, and no title unless you type one. A JPEG that needs no change is copied in byte for byte.
Can I do several cards at once?
Yes. Add the photos in order — front, back, front, back — and every two become one page. Sort by file name or drag them if they arrive out of order.