In our first post, we told you how a signup wall stopped us halfway through turning a few photos into one PDF. The tool we reach for most now does that job and more: the PDF Builder.
Many PDFs and photos go in, and one PDF comes out. It all happens in your browser: nothing is uploaded, there's no account, and you can use it as often as you like.
Here's a typical example: an expense claim that wants one PDF with the claim form, two receipts photographed on a phone (one sideways, of course) and the three bank statement pages that show the payments.
Every file in these GIFs is a made-up sample.
Drop it all in, build, done
Drag the files onto the page, pick them, or paste them. Each PDF shows its page count right away. Press Build PDF, then download. If that's all you need, you're finished.
Keep only the pages you need
Type the pages to keep next to a PDF, like 2, 4-5. Mistakes show up as you type ("Page 7 doesn't exist — this PDF has 6 pages."), and Build stays off until they're fixed. Or click the file, flip through its pages and tick the ones you want: the range rewrites itself.
3, 1 puts page 3 first, and 1, 1 repeats a page. Untick a whole file to leave it out without losing its range.
Put them in order, turn what's sideways
Drag a file by its handle or nudge it with the arrows. Click any file to preview it, and turn a page with ↺ ↻. A turned PDF page isn't redrawn, so its text stays selectable. Photos land on A4 pages to match the rest, or keep their own size if you prefer.
Make it small enough to send
Upload forms love limits like "max 1 MB". Choose Compress and a quality, and you see the size before you build: the two phone photos took this one from 7.6 MB to 1.1 MB at 45%. Or choose Fit a target size, type the limit, and the builder finds the best quality that fits. For a 1 MB limit, it built 1018.5 KB.
Those sizes aren't guesses. The builder quietly builds the PDF to measure it.
Pages copied from PDFs stay untouched by default, so their text stays selectable. For scans, tick Also compress pages taken from PDFs: it turns those pages into images, which saves a lot but makes their text unselectable. If that makes the file bigger instead, the tool says so.
Check it before you download it
Click built.pdf to flip through the result before you download it. The sideways hotel receipt is now upright on page 4.
Under the hood
- Pages are copied, not redrawn. pdf-lib copies the pages you picked into a new PDF, so anything you don't compress stays exactly as it was.
- Previews come from pdf.js. It also redraws pages as images when you ask to compress them.
- Problems show up when you add a file, not when you build. A damaged or password-protected PDF is flagged right next to it (password-protected ones can't be opened yet).
- iPhone HEIC and WebP photos work too. They're converted in your browser first.
Try it
Grab your own pile of files: misc9.app/pdfbuilder. It's free, it works in 7 languages, and your files never leave your device.
What would make it more useful for you? Tell us in the comments.
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