File A Reviews
The converters
Hands-on write-ups of the desktop apps, web tools, and phone apps that do this one job — what each is genuinely good at, and where it gets in the way.
Form 01 — Conversion Reference Sheet 1 of 1
Conversion Records
JPGs go in.
PDFs come out.
One narrow job, covered properly. We test the tools that turn photos and scans into PDF documents, and we write the walkthroughs for the parts that trip people up: page size, resolution, merging a stack of images, and keeping the text in a scan readable.
- Subject
- Turning JPG and JPEG images into PDF documents
- Covered here
- Converter reviews, side-by-sides, and step-by-step walkthroughs
- Typical jobs
- Receipts, scanned paperwork, and phone photos of pages
- Method
- Hands-on, plain language, no scores and no ranked tiers
The Directory
What is filed here
Six drawers, one subject. Reviews of the tools, walkthroughs for the jobs people actually bring to the counter, and reference pages for the settings that decide how the finished PDF behaves.
File B Walkthroughs
Receipts & paperwork
The everyday filing job: a pile of receipts, an invoice, a signed form. How to get them into one tidy PDF that an accountant, a landlord, or a claims portal will actually accept.
File C Walkthroughs
Phone photos as documents
A photo of a page is not a document yet. Cropping, straightening, flattening the shadow down the gutter, and knowing when to reshoot rather than rescue.
File D Reference
Resolution & page size
DPI in plain terms, Letter versus A4, portrait versus landscape, margins — and the trade you are always making between small print staying legible and the file staying small.
File E Walkthroughs
Many JPGs, one PDF
Combining a stack of images into a single document: getting the order right before you convert, rotating strays, dropping duplicates, and splitting a file back apart later.
File F Reference
Keeping the text readable
What separates a PDF you can read from one you can search. Contrast and sharpening before conversion, when OCR earns its keep, and how to check the result honestly.
Our Standards
Filed in triplicate
Three copies of the same commitment — one for the desk, one for the reader, one for the file. If we ever break one of them the page is wrong, and we would rather hear about it and fix it.
Copy 1 — Desk
We convert real files first
Every write-up starts with actual images pushed through the tool: a crumpled receipt, a flatbed scan, a photo taken in bad light. Feature lists are the last thing we read, not the first.
Copy 2 — Reader
We name the catch
Watermarks, page caps, forced sign-ups, quality quietly thrown away, uploads that leave your machine. Free is a price too, and we say what it is before we say anything kind.
Copy 3 — File
We disclose the money
Some links here are affiliate links and may earn us a commission. Nobody pays for a placement, a kind sentence, or a spot in this directory, and no tool sees a draft before you do.
At the Counter
How a conversion gets processed
The route every job takes, whichever tool you end up using. Our walkthroughs follow this order, so you can join at whichever step you are stuck on.
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Sort the source images
Look at what you actually have — phone snaps, flatbed scans, screenshots — and fix crop and orientation first. A PDF locks in whatever you feed it, so the cleanup belongs here.
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Pick the page it lands on
Letter or A4, portrait or landscape, with or without margins. Whether the image fits the page or the page fits the image is the choice most converters make for you silently.
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Choose a resolution you can defend
Enough detail that the smallest line of print survives, not so much that the file becomes unmailable. We explain what the DPI setting is doing rather than naming one magic number.
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Combine and order
If it is more than one image, set the sequence before you convert. Renaming the files so they sort correctly is usually faster than dragging thumbnails around afterwards.
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Read it back, then file it
Open the PDF at full size and read the smallest text on the page. Run OCR if you will need to search it later. Then give it a name your future self will recognise.