Photos of documents to a PDF under 100 KB

The short answer: two steps, in this order

You don't need a scanner. A clear phone photo of each page does the job, as long as you do two things in the right order:

1. Put the photos into a PDF with JPG to PDF. It copies each photo into the PDF exactly as it is, one photo per page, in the order you choose.
2. Shrink that PDF with Compress PDF to 100 KB. It reduces the pictures just enough to land under the limit.

Why this order? Because the first step keeps every pixel of your photos. In our test, 20 photos of 12 megapixels each, 62.4 MB in all, made a PDF of 62.4 MB: nothing was squeezed. That sounds like a problem, but it is the best starting point. The second step has all the detail to work with, and it decides how much to keep, instead of an app on your phone deciding for you earlier.

Both steps run inside your browser, so your photos are never uploaded. The rest of this post goes through each step, what to expect at 100 KB, and what to do when the result is softer than you hoped.

This post starts when you already have the photos. For taking them, or for scanning with a phone, see How to scan documents to PDF with your phone.

Take the photo for a small file

A 100 KB file is a tight budget that all the pages share, so every bit of the picture that isn't your document is wasted. A photo of a certificate lying on a bedsheet spends part of the budget on the bedsheet. These habits help most:

• Fill the frame with the paper. Move the phone closer until the page nearly touches the edges of the screen, so the document is the whole picture.
• Lay the page flat, on a plain dark surface. A table or a plain cloth makes the edges easy to see. Smooth out folds.
• Use soft daylight and skip the flash. Near a window is ideal. A flash leaves a bright patch that hides text.
• Hold the phone straight above the page. An angle bends the lines and makes one side of the page smaller than the other.
• Keep your shadow and fingers out of the picture, and tap the screen on the text so the camera focuses on it.

Crop if your gallery lets you. Most gallery apps have a crop tool. Cut away everything outside the paper's edge before you go on. The converted file only keeps what is in the photo, and a tight crop means 100 KB is spent on the document.

You don't need the camera's highest setting. To fit 100 KB, the pictures in your PDF will be brought down to a fraction of the detail a modern phone camera records. A sharp, well-lit photo at an ordinary setting is a better start than a huge but blurry one. Focus and light matter more than megapixels here.

One page, one photo. If a document has two sides or several pages, photograph each side or page separately, in order. Do not photograph two pages side by side in one picture: the text gets half the size.

Step 1: make the PDF from your photos

Open JPG to PDF in your phone's browser and go through these steps:

1. Choose your pictures. Tap Choose pictures and pick the photos from your gallery or your files. You can pick several at once.
2. Put the cards in order. Each photo becomes a card, and the number on the card is its page number. Drag a card by the numbered handle in its corner to move it. Put them in the order the form lists its documents.
3. Pick A4 and a Small margin, and leave Direction on Auto. A4 is the usual paper size in India. The page's own steps for a form suggest exactly this: the margin keeps the edges safe if someone prints the PDF.
4. Press Convert, then open the PDF and look at it. If a page is sideways, press the turn button on its card until it is upright, and convert again.
5. Download it. The PDF is saved with your other downloads.

Photos from a phone come out upright, because the converter follows the note a camera writes about how the phone was held. The converter also leaves out the hidden notes in a photo, such as the camera's make and the place where it was taken (GPS), so they are not in your PDF.

iPhone photos. iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. Safari can open HEIC photos, so use Safari on an iPhone, where they go into the PDF as high-quality JPGs. The other way is to make the iPhone take JPG photos: Settings, Camera, Formats, Most Compatible. The photos from your phone section of the JPG to PDF guide says more. Photos you already took stay HEIC.

Don't worry yet if the PDF is many megabytes. That is the expected result of this step, as the next one deals with it.

Step 2: bring the PDF under 100 KB

Open Compress PDF to 100 KB, choose the PDF you just made, and wait for the result line. It shows the size before and after, a green "Under 100 KB", and a word about the pictures: Sharp, Good, Readable or Rough.

Behind the scenes, the page makes the file, measures it and tries again until it is just under your limit, within 15% of it. So the result usually lands between 85 KB and 100 KB. It does not stop at the first size that fits, because a much smaller file would be blurrier than it needs to be.

The new file keeps your file's name and adds -100KB at the end, like marksheets-100KB.pdf. Your original is not changed. That is the file to upload.

If you are doing this at a computer cafe or a friend's computer, remember that the downloaded files stay in that computer's Downloads folder. Delete them when you are done.

How many photos can one 100 KB PDF hold?

Every page of the PDF shares the 100 KB. So the question is how clear each page stays when you add more of them. We measured this on three real scans of A4 pages scanned at 300 dpi, put under 100 KB with the same page. The table shows the word the result gave and the pixels per inch (ppi) the pages kept, for the colour contract:

Each time the pages double, sharpness drops by about a quarter. Pages packed with small text keep less than pages with wide margins. The words follow the ppi: Sharp is 150 ppi or more, Good is 100 or more, Readable is 45 or more, and Rough is anything below that.

An honest note about our numbers. These tests used scans, not phone photos. A photographed page is a picture too, and the page treats it the same way, so the same rule should apply: more pages in one file means less room for each. But we have not measured phone photos of documents, so we can't give you a ppi for them. Always open the result and look.

For one or two documents in one file, 100 KB works well. At four pages it is readable but soft. Beyond about six pages, plan for separate files or a bigger limit. The how many pages fit section of the 100 KB guide has the full table.

One PDF, or one PDF for each document?

Read the form before you decide. Many forms have a separate upload box for each document, and each box has its own limit. If yours does, make one small PDF per document: each one gets its own 100 KB, so each stays much clearer than if they all shared a file.

JPG to PDF has an option for exactly this: choose A PDF each, and it makes one PDF for each photo and puts them all in a ZIP file. Your phone's file manager can open the ZIP. Then, in Compress PDF to 100 KB, choose all the PDFs at once. Each becomes its own row, its own result and its own download, and each name gets -100KB added. Names like class10-marksheet-100KB.pdf make it easy to pick the right file in the upload window.

If the form allows only one upload for everything, put all the photos into one PDF in step 1, in the order the form lists them. Then shrink it last. The limit is checked on the file you upload, so shrinking comes after joining. The budget is shared, so four documents in one file get about a quarter each.

If you have already made several PDFs and the form wants one, Merge PDF joins them. Do that before the shrinking step, not after.

Check it the way the form checker will

Someone, or a program, will look at your file after you upload it. Do that first yourself:

• Read the result line. Sharp or Good: upload it. Readable: fine for most forms, but check small numbers. Rough: follow the next section first.
• Open the new file and zoom in until a line of text fills the width of your screen.
• Read every number the form depends on: roll number, date of birth, marks, certificate number, account number.
• Look for the stamp and the signature. They should still be visible as a stamp and a signature, even if softer.
• Count the pages and check the order. The compressed file has exactly the pages of the PDF you made.
• Check every page is upright. A sideways page is the most common slip. Fix it with the turn button in JPG to PDF, convert again, and shrink again.

If something is unclear and the form allows a bigger file, pick the bigger size at the top of the compressor page, or use Compress PDF to 200 KB. Twice the room makes a visible difference.

If the result is Rough or too soft

Rough means the pages had to drop below 45 ppi to fit. Small print may be unreadable. In order of what helps most:

1. Send fewer pages. Take out blank backs, cover sheets and anything the form doesn't ask for. In JPG to PDF, press the remove button on those cards.
2. Use separate uploads if the form has them, as described above.
3. Take the photo again, closer and cropped to the paper, in better light. A tight crop gives the whole budget to the document.
4. Start from your first photos. A PDF that was already squeezed for another form has lost detail for good. Always go back to the original photos.
5. Ask whether a bigger limit is allowed, and use it.

If the form gives you no other choice, a soft file that you have checked is still better than one that is refused. The when it says Rough section of the guide has the details.

What about "Over 100 KB"? This is rare for photos, because pictures can always be made smaller. It happens with typed PDFs, whose text and fonts can't shrink. The post Why won't my PDF go under 100 KB? explains it.

Your passport photo and signature are different

Most application forms ask for your passport-size photo and your signature as separate JPG pictures, each with its own rules for size and pixels. This workflow is not for those. Compress PDF to 100 KB works on PDFs only, and NoUploadPDF has no tool yet that resizes a JPG to a number of kilobytes. For the photo and signature, follow the form's own instructions.

The two-step workflow here is for the documents that the form wants as PDF: certificates, marksheets, ID proofs and similar papers.

Your photos stay on your phone

Photos of an Aadhaar card, a marksheet or a bank page are among the most private pictures you take. Most sites that make PDFs upload your photos to their computers first. Neither of these tools does. Each runs inside your browser, has no upload step and never sends your photos or your PDF anywhere. The page contacts only this site and Google's ad service, which shows the ads that keep the tools free. Our code never gives your files to the ad code.

You can test it: let the page finish loading, switch off mobile data and Wi-Fi, and make your PDF. It still works, because there is nothing to upload. There is no account, no sign-up and no watermark on your document. The privacy policy has the details.

Last, a small habit: keep your original photos. If another form wants a different size, start again from them, not from a PDF that has already been squeezed.