Scan to PDF: Scan Documents with Your Camera

How to scan a document to PDF

1. Press Start camera and allow camera access (on a phone, Take photo opens the camera app instead). To scan existing pictures, use Upload pictures or drop them on the page.
2. Lay the paper flat on a plain, evenly lit surface and press Scan page. The page edges are found automatically, the page is straightened and the lighting is cleaned up.
3. Keep scanning: the camera stays on, so you can add as many pages as you need. Move pages with the arrows, rotate them, delete a bad one and use the crop button to drag the four corners if the edges were not found.
4. Choose A4, US Letter or the picture's own size, then press Create PDF. The file downloads straight away, and you can keep scanning and create it again with the extra pages.

What the scanner does to each photo

A phone photo of a page is slanted, shadowed and slightly yellow. For every page the tool finds the bright sheet, cuts it out and straightens it with a perspective correction, then applies the look you chose. Clean colour turns the paper white and keeps the ink; Greyscale removes colour; Black and white adapts to the lighting across the page, which gives the sharpest text and the smallest PDF; Original photo keeps the picture untouched.

Tips for a good scan

• Use daylight or an even lamp and avoid casting your own shadow on the page.
• Pick a contrasting surface: a white page on a dark table is found and cropped best.
• Hold the phone parallel to the page and fill the frame; the PDF is as sharp as the picture.
• For a long document, choose Black and white and Balanced quality to keep the PDF small enough to email.

Need to change the result afterwards? Merge PDF, compress it, or rotate pages. To copy text from a scan, run the pictures through Image to Text (OCR); this tool saves the pages as pictures, so the PDF is not searchable.

Privacy: the camera picture, every page and the PDF stay in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and the pages exist only in this tab until you download them or close it. The camera light turns off when you stop the camera or leave the page.

Frequently asked questions

How do I scan a document to PDF without an app?

Open this page on your phone or laptop, press Start camera (or Take photo on a phone), scan each page and press Create PDF. There is nothing to install, and it works in current Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.

Can I scan several pages into one PDF?

Yes. The camera stays on after every scan, so you simply keep scanning. All pages are listed in order, and you can reorder, rotate or delete them before creating one PDF. You can also add the pages after an existing PDF.

Are my scans uploaded anywhere?

No. The camera picture and every page are processed on your own device and the PDF is built in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server.

Why is my scan cropped wrongly?

Automatic edge finding works best with a bright page on a darker, plain surface. If the corners are off, press the crop button on the page and drag the four corners onto the page corners, or press Whole picture to keep everything.

Is the scanned PDF searchable?

No, the pages are saved as pictures. To get the text, use the Image to Text (OCR) tool on the same pictures and copy the result.

What if the camera does not start?

Allow the camera in the address bar, close other apps that use it, or use Take photo (phones) or Upload pictures instead. These work even when the browser cannot open the camera directly.

Updated 2026-10-18