Convert HEIC to PDF
Turn iPhone photos straight into a PDF. HEIC pictures are decoded in your browser and placed one per page on A4, Letter or a page the shape of the photo, with no JPG step in between. Your photos are never uploaded.
How to convert HEIC to PDF
iPhone photos straight to PDF, without a JPG step
iPhones save photos as HEIC by default. When a form, a landlord or an office asks for the photos as a PDF, the usual route has two steps: convert the HEIC files to JPG, then put the JPGs into a PDF. Here it is one step. Drop the HEIC files as they are, and each photo becomes a page in a single PDF.
The photos are decoded inside your browser by a HEIC decoder that only loads on the pages that need it, then saved inside the PDF as JPEG at a high quality setting. Nothing is uploaded at any point, which matters when the photos show an ID card, a bank letter or the inside of your home.
The location and camera details that an iPhone stores with each photo are not copied into the PDF, because every photo is drawn again before it is placed on the page. Only the picture itself goes in.
Why Windows will not open HEIC, and why a PDF will
Windows does not come with HEIC support. HEIC photos are compressed with HEVC, a patented video codec, and Windows only shows them after two extra packages from the Microsoft Store are installed. Until then, File Explorer shows a blank thumbnail and the Photos app says the format is not supported. Our HEIC vs JPG guide explains the details and the fixes.
Installing those packages only fixes your own computer. A PDF avoids the problem for whoever receives it: computers and phones come with a PDF reader, and the photos inside are stored as JPEG, which needs nothing extra. If the other person needs separate image files rather than one document, convert HEIC to JPG instead.
A PDF also gets past upload forms that refuse HEIC. Government, bank and job application sites often accept JPG, PNG and PDF only, and many of them ask for one file per document. A single PDF with every page of a document in it fits that kind of form better than a handful of separate photos.
Several photos in one PDF
Add up to 30 photos at a time, each up to 50 MB and 200 MB together, and they all go into one PDF called squishly-images.pdf. A single photo gives a PDF with the same name as the photo. Pages follow the order in which the files arrive, and the tool cannot reorder them afterwards. Screenshots taken on the same iPhone are PNG files, and they can go into the same PDF as the photos.
For photos of paper documents, such as receipts, a signed form or the pages of a contract, choose A4 or Letter. Each photo is scaled to fit inside a 1 cm margin and centered, and a photo that is wider than it is tall gets a landscape page. For holiday pictures or a set of photos to share, Fit image makes every page the shape of its photo, with no white border.
iPhone photos have a lot of pixels, and once they are saved as JPEG inside the PDF each one can take several megabytes, so a PDF of a dozen photos can be too big to email. Compress PDF makes the finished file smaller by saving the photos inside it at a smaller size, and its Balanced level keeps a photographed page easy to read.