# Scan to PDF > Turn photographed pages into a clean, professional scan: deskew, shadow removal, color/grayscale/B&W, and auto page-order by filename. - Page: https://acepdfmd.com/tool/scan-to-pdf/ - Updated: 2026-09-12 - Runs at: https://acepdfmd.com (Uploaded files are deleted within 60 minutes. No signup for light use.) - Also in 29 languages: https://acepdfmd.com//tool/scan-to-pdf/ ## Turn phone photos of paper pages into a clean scanned PDF You photographed a stack of receipts, a contract, or a school form with your phone because there was no scanner nearby, and now you have a folder of crooked, shadowy images. Scan to PDF turns those photos into pages that look like they came off a scanner, whatever the light was like when you shot them. Upload your images and choose an output mode of color, grayscale, or black and white, depending on whether you need a faithful copy or a plain text page. By default the tool straightens crooked photos, evens out shadows from a hand or lamp, and orders pages using the numbers in each filename, so photos shot as page1, page2, page3 come out in order. Each option can be turned off if you would rather keep the raw image untouched. Multiple photos combine into a single multi-page PDF in one pass, which is the main reason to use this over converting images separately. Photograph pages flat and evenly lit before uploading, since cleanup helps but cannot rescue a badly blurred shot. ### When to reach for something else - Use Scan to Markdown instead if you need the text inside pages to be searchable or editable. - Skip shadow removal for photos already taken under even, flat lighting. - Turn off auto-order if your filenames were not numbered when you took the photos. ## How to use the Scan to PDF tool 1. Add your JPG, JPEG, PNG files: drag & drop or click to browse; you can add several. 2. Set your options: Output mode, Auto-straighten crooked photos, Remove shadows / even out lighting, Auto-order pages by number in filename. 3. Click “Process Scan to PDF” and download your result. ## Common questions ### Is Scan to PDF free? Yes. Scan to PDF is free for light use with no signup needed. Anonymous visitors get 10 free tasks per day, and creating a free account makes daily use unlimited. A paid Pro plan removes ads and raises file-size limits for heavier work. ### Is my file safe? Yes. Your file is sent over HTTPS, processed by self-hosted open-source software on our servers (no third-party AI or cloud APIs), and deleted within 60 minutes at the latest, usually right after your result is ready. ### What file formats does Scan to PDF accept? Scan to PDF accepts JPG, JPEG, PNG files. Convert other formats to a supported one first; the related tools below can usually do it. ## Related tools - [OCR PDF](https://acepdfmd.com/tool/ocr-pdf/): Make scanned PDFs searchable by adding a text layer. - [Image to PDF](https://acepdfmd.com/tool/image-to-pdf/): Combine multiple images into a single PDF file. - [JPG to PDF](https://acepdfmd.com/tool/jpg-to-pdf/): Combine images into a single PDF. - [Scan to Markdown](https://acepdfmd.com/tool/scan-to-markdown/): Turn photographed pages into clean, searchable Markdown text. The same deskew and shadow-removal cleanup as Scan to PDF, then OCR extracts the text into a .md file, page by page. - [Compress PDF](https://acepdfmd.com/tool/compress/): Shrink file size by optimizing images. Read the guide: [OCR for PDFs and Images: How to Get Accurate Text](https://acepdfmd.com/guides/ocr-guide/)