Scan to PDF
Turn a webcam or phone camera into a document scanner and save the pages as one PDF.
The camera stream never leaves this tab. Frames are captured and turned into a PDF on your device, so scanned paperwork is not uploaded anywhere.
Make the scan searchable
About Scan to PDF
The paper you need to send is on the desk and the scanner is in another building, or does not exist any more. A camera is a perfectly good scanner if something cleans up what it captures, and that is the job here. Point the camera at a page, capture it, and the image is pushed through a contrast curve that drives paper towards white and ink towards black — the difference between a photograph of a page and something that reads like a scan. Capture as many pages as you need, reorder them, drop the ones that came out badly, and save the lot as a single PDF.
Features
- Uses a webcam or, on a phone, the rear camera by default
- Greyscale and high-contrast modes that make paper read as paper
- Capture page after page into one growing document
- Reorder and delete pages before saving
- Drop in photos you already took, cleaned up the same way
- Save with the page fitted to the photo, or fitted onto A4, Letter or Legal
- Running page count and total size as you scan
How to use the Scan to PDF
- Start the camera and allow access when the browser asks
- Frame a page and capture it, then repeat for each page
- Reorder or remove pages in the strip below
- Pick a page size and save the PDF
Example
Input
Three pages of a signed lease, captured with a laptop webcam in high-contrast mode
Output
lease.pdf — three A4 pages, paper reading white and the signature clearly legible.
High-contrast mode is what turns a grey photograph into something that looks scanned.
Common errors & troubleshooting
- The browser will not open the camera. — Camera access needs permission and a secure connection. Allow it for this page in your browser's site settings; if there is no camera at all, drop in photos instead.
- The captured page is blurry. — Give the camera a moment to focus before capturing, and keep the page flat under even light. A phone's rear camera will always beat a laptop webcam here.
- Shadows across the page. — Light the page from the side rather than from behind you, and lift the camera higher so your hands are out of the light path.
- The page is skewed in the PDF. — There is no automatic edge detection here, so frame the page squarely. If it is already saved, rotate or crop the PDF afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
- Does my camera feed go anywhere?
- No. The video stream stays in this tab, frames are captured to a canvas, and the PDF is written on your device. Nothing is streamed or stored elsewhere.
- Can I use my phone rather than a laptop?
- Yes — open the page on the phone and it will ask for the rear camera, which is much better suited to documents than a laptop webcam.
- Which mode should I use for a printed page?
- High contrast. Greyscale keeps more shading for photographs and stamps, and colour is only worth it when the colour itself matters.
- Should I fit the page to the photo or to A4?
- Fit to A4 or Letter when the document will be printed or filed with other paperwork. Fit to the photo when you want the exact framing you captured.
- How many pages can I scan in one go?
- As many as your browser's memory allows. Very long documents are safer scanned in batches and merged afterwards.
Related tools
- Image to PDF — Combine images into a single PDF (auto / portrait / landscape).
- PDF OCR — Recognise the text in a scanned PDF and make it searchable.
- Compress PDF — Shrink a PDF by re-rendering each page to a JPEG at a chosen quality and resolution.
- Rotate PDF — Rotate all pages or a selection by 90/180/270°.
- Crop PDF — Trim margins from every page via the crop box.
- Merge PDFs — Combine multiple PDFs into one, with reordering.
- Image Optimizer — Re-encode and shrink images (JPEG/WebP/PNG), optionally resizing.
All ArrayKit tools