Press to PDF is a widely available choice these days, and it'south been made even easier with OS support across most platforms and even on mobile. And then while making a PDF out of a Give-and-take document or making a combination of documents is quite piece of cake, what if you lot have a bunch of scanned pages in JPG format that you desire to combine into a single PDF to be shared with someone else?

Accomplishing this is going to be a bit easier if yous are on Windows ten considering Microsoft has added this ability as a native feature to its latest operating system. Yet, nosotros'll besides be recommending some third party tools that tin become the job done on older versions of Windows. Forth with being a quick way to share a bunch of images in a convenient format, the feature is crucial for merging document scans or slides into a single file.

Speaking of which, Microsoft's ain Office Lens app which is available free of charge on Android and iOS essentially turns your smartphone into a portable scanner that can capture documents, business organization cards, receipts, whiteboards, then on. We came away with a practiced impression later using the app recently to send a agglomeration of signed paperwork, afterward which nosotros used Window's 10 integrated characteristic to combine them all.

Combining many images into a single PDF on Windows x

Instead of tiresome you with the images of our paperwork (which is the most mutual utilise case here), we'll be sampling a few of our favorite images from around TechSpot over the years (iii of which TS editor Shawn Knight took himself).

For those who are interested, the images are from our wallpaper recommendations terminal year and Shawn's guide on taking great fireworks photos.

The procedure nosotros'll be going through volition work with any compatible image format, again, including scans, slides, and and so along. Earlier advancing, make sure your images are named in the society that you want them to appear in the PDF.

If you aren't working with scans and then you may have to rename some files (adding ane, two, iii etc. to the start of the file names seems like the quickest mode). In the event that it makes your chore any easier, here'south a pro tip from our list of Calculator Tricks Anybody Should Know:

Rename files sequentially in Windows

You don't need to download whatever programs to perform a batch file rename. Instead, you lot tin can select all the files you want to change, right-click the first one in the list, select rename (or use F2), and type in the proper noun. This will automatically change all the other files with the same root name with a suffix: (ane), (ii), and then on.

Assuming the files are in the desired order, you can select them all, correct click on the first 1 and choose Print from the context menu for a prompt that volition allow you to begin combining the images into a PDF.

For reference, with the default settings we used (which included "Fit picture to frame") some of the images lost a bit of quality but the resolution remained sufficient for full screen viewing, and this likely won't be a concern if yous are working with documents instead of pictures.

Combining many images into a single PDF on Windows 8, 7 and older

If you lot attempt that process on Windows 8 or earlier without installing a third party tool, Windows itself will only provide the power to relieve equally an XPS or OpenXPS Certificate, not PDF. That being the case, we've included a listing of the pinnacle five PDF file creators from our download department, the first ii of which seem unanimously approved.

PDFCreator | doPDF | PDF24 Creator | pdfFactory | Bullzip PDF Printer


Working with any of these utilities should be straightforward, particularly so if you happened to take read the Windows 10 section, but we'll summarize the process again.

First download and install i of those programs to add a PDF print driver to Windows (note... we tested PDFCreator on Windows 8 and 10, though we'd stick with the latter'south integrated part unless there'due south a specific reason not to):

Brand sure your images are in a unmarried folder and that the files are named so they are in the order y'all want them to appear in the PDF. Select all of the files, right click the starting time ane and striking Print which will open a prompt with options including a dropdown list of printer devices where you should find the newly installed PDF tool. After that's selected, you tin can print the PDF.

Alternatively, you lot tin can launch PDFCreator itself and follow its GUI.

Of note, we couldn't tell a divergence between the image quality of Windows 10's native PDF print selection and the file created by PDFCreator with its highest image quality setting.

If anything, the integrated tool performed better overall. It was a little faster at file cosmos, its output file was much smaller (10MB vs 60MB) and information technology got the image orientation correct by default (PDFCreator's output had our landscape images in portrait). That can be fixed with a click or ii of grade but information technology seemed worth noting since most folks are likely to click through without changing whatever settings.

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