By ByteGuide Tools · Reviewed 26 October 2026

Lighting, page detection, filters and a final check before you send a scan.

A readable scan begins with the photograph, before any filter is applied. A bright white page on a darker desk gives the page detector a clearer boundary than a white page on a white table. Keep all four corners in the photograph and leave a small border around them.

Set up the photograph

Flatten the sheet and clean the camera lens. Use even light from the side or two sides; a ceiling light directly above can create a shadow from your phone. Hold the camera roughly parallel to the paper. If the text is blurry, retake the photo rather than trying to recover missing detail with a stronger filter. For a shiny page, change the light angle until the glare disappears.

Crop, preview, then choose a filter

1. Open Scan image to PDF and choose a photo or use Take photo. Camera permission is optional; selecting a file works without it.
2. Leave Page crop on Automatic page detection. The tool estimates a light page against its surroundings and straightens the detected quadrilateral.
3. Inspect the preview, including the page number, handwriting and all four edges. Automatic detection can mistake a bright object or a shadow for the paper edge.
4. If the crop is wrong, choose Keep original image, or use Manual margins. A manual margin of 10% on each side retains the middle 80% of the width. Manual margins trim; they do not straighten a tilted page.
5. Choose the filter, enter a PDF file name, run the tool and download the result.

Original color is useful for charts, highlights and stamps. Enhanced color strengthens contrast while retaining colors. Grayscale suits many printed pages. High contrast grayscale emphasizes pale text but can lose faint pencil marks. Black & white turns pixels into two tones; adjust its threshold while checking small characters and signatures.

A realistic final check

Open the exported PDF and zoom into its smallest writing. Check that no corner, answer line or signature was cut off. Confirm the page count and order. The tool uses the selected-file order; when order matters, rename the photos before selecting them and inspect the resulting pages. Each photo is fitted onto an A4 page. Up to 12 photos are supported, with 36 MB combined and the per-image limits shown in the tool.

This creates an image PDF, not editable text. Use image OCR separately when you need selectable text, and review its recognition. Cropping is a presentation adjustment and does not remove information securely from an existing PDF. Selected photos are processed in this browser. Keep your original photos until you have checked the downloaded file.

Use the related tools

• Scan image to PDF
• Images to PDF

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