FormatFoxIt does not merge existing PDFs
Images become a PDF. Two finished PDFs cannot be joined into one. If that is your job, you want a PDF tool rather than a converter.
Combine photos into one PDF on iPhone
Six photographs of a contract are six attachments and a confused recipient. One PDF is a document. Here is how to get there, with and without an app.
Free in FormatFox, any number of photos, nothing uploaded.
The two built in routes
Photos, Share, Print, then pinch
Select your photos, tap Share and choose Print. On the print preview, pinch outwards with two fingers. The preview opens as a PDF, and from there Share lets you save it to Files. It is an odd gesture to have to know, and it is genuinely the quickest route when it works.
Files, select, Create PDF
If the images are already in the Files app, select them, press and hold on the selection and choose Create PDF. This one respects file name order, which makes it the better choice for pages you named yourself.
What neither route tells you. Neither shows the size of the PDF it just made, and neither checks that every page actually rendered. A twelve page contract that quietly became an eleven page PDF is a problem you find out about later, from the person you sent it to.
Doing it in FormatFox
- Tap Choose photos and select every page, or Choose files if they live in Files.
- Turn on Combine into PDF. The per file format picker disappears, because there is now one output rather than several.
- Tap Create PDF. Each image becomes one page, sized to that image, in the order you selected them.
- The finished file is reopened and its page count is compared against the number of images before the app reports success. A short PDF fails loudly instead of quietly.
Mixed input is fine. HEIC straight from the camera, JPG from a chat and PNG screenshots can go into the same PDF without converting them first.
What it looks like
Be clear about what this is not
FormatFox builds a PDF out of pictures. It is worth saying plainly what that does not include, so nobody installs it for the wrong reason.
There is no OCR and no text layer
The pages are pictures of pages. The text in them is not searchable or selectable. The Notes app scanner is a better fit when you need recognised text.
No edge detection or perspective fixing
A photo taken at an angle stays at that angle. Frame the page squarely, or use the document scanner in Notes and then bring the result here.
The PDF is as large as the photos
Full resolution camera images make a heavy PDF. Resize the photos first if the result has to travel by mail. See compressing photos.
Questions people ask
Can iPhone combine photos into a PDF without an app?
Yes, in two places. Select the photos in Photos, tap Share, choose Print, then pinch outwards on the preview and share the result as a PDF. Or move the images into Files, select them, press and hold, and use Create PDF. Both work well when the photos are already in the right order and the right format.
Why does the PDF come out in the wrong order?
The Print and Files routes both follow the order the system already has, which is capture time in Photos and file name in Files. If you photographed page three before page one, the PDF follows the camera and not the document. Renaming the files in Files first is the reliable fix.
Does FormatFox change the size or the aspect of each page?
No. Each image gets its own page sized to that image, so a portrait photo makes a portrait page and a landscape photo makes a landscape page. Nothing is cropped and nothing is stretched to a letter or A4 frame.
Is combining photos into a PDF a paid feature?
No. It is free and there is no cap on how many photos go in, even though converting many separate files into many separate outputs is a Pro feature. Combining is inherently a multi file job, so gating it would have made the free tier useless for the thing people most often need.
Keep reading
- Compress photos on iPhoneThe two levers that actually shrink a photo, which one is free, and how to hit a 25 MB mail limit.
- Resize an image on iPhonePixels are not bytes. How to set the longest side of a photo and keep it the right way up.
- Audio converter for iPhoneM4A, WAV, AIFF and CAF on device, what the encoder settings are, and why MP3 goes in but never comes out.
One document instead of a pile of pictures