PDF Scanner
Scan documents into a PDF using your camera — capture multiple pages, straighten each with a manual crop, sharpen text with a Black & White or Enhance filter, reorder pages, then download. No camera? Upload photos instead. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is ever uploaded.
Input
Capture pages with your camera, or upload photos, then press Create PDF. Everything runs in your browser — nothing is ever uploaded.
Guides
PDF Scanner turns your phone or laptop camera into a document scanner — capture a page, straighten it with a quick crop, sharpen the text with a Black & White or Enhance filter, then repeat for every page of the document. When you're done, it compiles every page into one PDF you can download. No account, no page limit, no watermark, and nothing is ever uploaded — the camera feed, every photo, and the finished PDF all stay on your device.
How to use it
- Press Start camera and allow camera access when your browser asks.
- Point the camera at the page and press Capture — the camera stays on, so you can capture the next page right away.
- No camera, or scanning from photos you already have? Use Upload photos instead, or alongside captures — both feed the same page list.
- On any page, press Edit to drag a crop box around just the document (crops out the desk, hands, or background) and pick a filter — Black & white for a crisp, high-contrast scan, or Enhance to boost contrast and color without desaturating.
- Reorder pages with the up/down arrows, or remove one you don't want.
- Press Create PDF, then download the result.
How it works
Capture and upload both happen through your browser's own APIs — getUserMedia for the live camera feed, a canvas to grab a frame or apply a crop and filter, and jsPDF to lay the finished pages out as a PDF. Every step runs on your device; no photo or page ever leaves your browser, and there's no server-side processing to wait on or trust.
Why crop each page manually instead of automatic edge detection?
Automatic corner detection is unreliable on a cluttered desk, a dark background, or a curled page — it routinely crops the wrong region and you have to fix it anyway. A manual crop box takes a few seconds and is always right, so this tool skips the automation and goes straight to the reliable part.
Does the Black & White filter actually threshold to pure black and white?
No — it's a grayscale-plus-contrast boost, the same look a scanner app's "document mode" produces: high-contrast enough that faint text pops, without turning your midtones into a first-generation fax. Enhance does the contrast/brightness boost while keeping color, for photos and documents where color matters.
What if I already have a scanned PDF and want to make it searchable?
That's a different job — try Scanned PDF Converter, which OCRs an existing scanned PDF into one with selectable, searchable text. If you just want to combine photos you already have (no camera, no crop/filter) into a PDF, Image to PDF is the more direct tool for that.