How to Convert Images to PDF on Mac

Turn images into a PDF when someone expects a single document that opens anywhere and prints on normal paper.

Expense systems, application portals and government forms often take one PDF per submission. A PDF also keeps the pages in a fixed order, which a folder of photos can't, and it prints at a predictable size.

Finder's Create PDF Quick Action turns selected images into one PDF: select them, Control-click and choose Quick Actions > Create PDF. The new PDF appears next to the images.

It gives you no say over page size or margins. For more control, open all the images in one Preview window, drag the thumbnails into order, then choose File > Print and pick Save as PDF from the PDF menu. The print dialog sets the paper size and how each image is scaled onto it, one print job at a time.

File Acture's Images to PDF combines JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, TIFF, GIF and BMP images into one PDF, one image per page.

Drag the files in the list into page order, then choose a Page size and a Margin, type a File name under Result and click Create PDF. The PDF is saved to Downloads › File Acture or the folder you choose, and the images themselves stay untouched.

JPEG photos are embedded byte for byte, so they don't lose any quality; only their metadata, such as camera details and location, is left out. Other images are stored as high-quality JPEG, or losslessly when they have transparency. Photos appear upright and keep their color profiles, and nothing is uploaded along the way.

Choose A4 or US Letter when the PDF will be printed or added to other documents, and Fit to image when it will only be viewed on screen.

• Fit to image: each page takes the size of its image at 150 DPI, so there are no white borders.
• A4 and US Letter: each image is fitted on a standard page and turned to landscape when the image is wider than it is tall.
• Margin: None, Small (a quarter inch) or Large (half an inch). A small margin keeps printers from cutting off the edges.

The order of the file list is the order of the pages, so arrange the list before you click Create PDF.

Files join the list in the order you add them. Drag rows up or down to move them, or give the images numbered names such as 01, 02 and 03 and add them from a Finder window sorted by name. Removing a file from the list takes it out of the PDF without touching the image itself.

A PDF made from JPEG photos ends up about as large as the photos themselves, because File Acture embeds them without recompressing.

Screenshots and other images without transparency are stored as high-quality JPEG, so small text stays readable. If the finished PDF is too large for an upload, compress the PDF to a target size instead of shrinking each photo by hand.

A tidy image PDF comes from the right page size and margins, plus OCR or compression afterwards when the file needs them.

• Need searchable text? Run OCR PDF on the result, so the words in photographed documents can be found.
• Too big to upload? Compress the PDF to a target size such as 2 MB.
• Animated GIFs contribute only their first frame.
• Going the other way? Convert PDF pages to JPG.
• Longer documents: the free version takes up to 5 images per run, with 3 runs on each Mac. Pro has no limit; see pricing.

No: File Acture leaves photo metadata out of the PDF, so the GPS position stored in many phone photos doesn't travel with your document.

Online converters, by contrast, need your photos on their servers before they can build anything. File Acture builds the PDF on your Mac, so neither the images nor where they were taken leave it.