Does scanning a document upload it anywhere?

No. Every step — the camera capture, the corner detection, the crop, the perspective correction — happens locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded to PDFree's servers or anywhere else. You can verify this yourself by opening your browser's DevTools Network tab while scanning.

Why does every photo I add show a crop screen, even from my gallery?

This tool is built specifically for scanning documents, so every photo — camera or gallery — goes through the same edge-detection and crop review, exactly like a dedicated scanner app. If you just want to combine existing photos into a PDF without cropping, use PDFree's JPG to PDF tool instead — it skips the review screen for a faster, simpler combine.

What if the automatic edge detection gets it wrong?

Drag any of the four corner handles to adjust the crop before confirming. If detection doesn't find a confident edge at all, the tool starts you with a safe default crop that you can freely reshape.

Can I skip cropping for a photo that isn't a document?

Yes. On the review screen, choose Skip instead of confirming a crop — the original photo is added to your PDF unprocessed.

Does it work in color, or only black and white?

Both. Choose Grayscale (the default — whitens the background and sharpens text, best for plain documents) or Color (corrects uneven lighting while keeping the real colors of the page).

Can I scan multiple pages into one PDF?

Yes. Add as many photos as you need — from the camera, your gallery, or both — reorder them by dragging, and they're combined into a single PDF when you save.

Document Scanner — Scan with Camera or Photos to PDF

Document Scanner

Scan with your camera or gallery photos — auto-crop, straighten, and save as PDF, entirely in your browser.

Drop photos here

or choose from your gallery — every photo gets a crop review, just like the camera

Choose Photos

Document Scanner — Turn Photos into a Clean PDF

Need to scan a contract, receipt, ID, or handwritten note but don't have a scanner? PDFree's Document Scanner turns your phone or webcam into one — take a photo (or use an existing one from your gallery), and the tool automatically finds the document's edges, straightens out any angle, and cleans it up for you.

Unlike PDFree's JPG to PDF tool — built for quickly combining photos you already have exactly as they are — every photo added here goes through the same crop-and-straighten review, camera or gallery, because that's the whole point of a scanner: turning an imperfect photo of a page into something that reads like it came off an actual scanner.

How it works

Take a photo or pick one from your gallery. The camera view works right in your browser — no app to install. A live magnifier appears while you're placing a corner, so fine adjustments are easy even on a small phone screen.

Review the auto-detected crop. Drag any of the four corners if the automatic edge detection needs a nudge, rotate the photo left or right if it came in sideways, or reset the crop back to the detected default if you change your mind. Choose Skip if the photo doesn't need cropping at all — it's added to your PDF exactly as taken.

Choose Color or Grayscale, add more pages the same way — reordering them afterward is just a drag — then save the whole thing as one PDF.

What you can scan

The auto-crop and perspective correction work on any rectangular page: multi-page contracts and letters, receipts, ID cards and passports, handwritten notes, or a page from a book or magazine. For a spread across two facing book pages, book-spread mode splits it down the spine into two separate scans automatically instead of capturing one warped double-page image.

Tips for a cleaner scan

Shoot in even light where you can — a single bright corner or a strong shadow across the page makes the automatic edge detection work harder and can leave part of the background looking uneven after cleanup.

Put the document on a surface with real contrast to its edges. A white page on a white desk is the hardest case for any edge detector, ours included — a darker or patterned surface underneath gives it a clean line to find.

Hold the camera roughly parallel to the page. A steep angle is still correctable, but a closer-to-flat shot means less perspective distortion to correct in the first place, and the tool will also warn you if a corner looks clipped out of frame.

Why it's different from a phone's built-in scanner app

Nothing leaves your device. The photo, the edge detection, the perspective correction — it all happens locally in your browser, the same way every PDFree tool works. There's no account, no app download, and no file size limit. Because it runs as a web app rather than a native install, it also works the same way whether you open it in a regular mobile browser tab or embedded inside another app's webview — useful if you're reaching it from somewhere other than a normal browser tab.

Output and file handling

All the pages you scan in one session — camera, gallery, or a mix of both — are combined into a single PDF when you save, in the order you leave them in. There's no daily limit on how many documents you can scan, and no cap on how many pages go into one PDF; the practical limit is only your device's own memory, the same as any other browser-based PDFree tool. Nothing is queued or held on a server in between — each photo is processed, reviewed, and discarded from memory the moment you close the tab.