Scan documents to PDF with your phone

Scanning with a phone, done properly

A phone photo of a form is not the same as a scan. It is taken at an angle, the paper looks grey or yellow, a shadow from your hand falls across one corner, and the file is a 4 MB JPEG that some upload portals refuse. This tool fixes each of those things: it finds the edges of the sheet, pulls the corners back into a straight rectangle, lifts the background to white and saves every page into a single PDF sized like real paper.

How to use this tool

1. Take or choose photos. On a phone, tap Take a photo. Lay the page on a darker surface — a table, the floor, a folder — and keep all four corners in frame. Add more pages with Photo or Add pages.
2. Check the corners. FormFlow places four handles on the paper. Drag any that are off. Whole photo skips cropping, Rotate turns the page a quarter turn.
3. Pick a look. Black & white is crisp and small; Auto colour keeps colour. Switch to Preview to see the cleaned page.
4. Create the PDF. Choose the page size and, if you want, searchable text. Download — or send the PDF straight on to Sign PDF or Fill PDF form.

Examples

• A signed paper lease photographed on the kitchen table: four pages, black & white, Letter size — ready to email back to the landlord.
• A school form that only exists on paper: scan it, then open it in Fill PDF form and type your answers on top.
• Receipts for an expense report: Auto colour, "Same shape as the photo" page size, and searchable text so you can find a vendor name later.

For more tips on light, angles and paper, read how to scan documents to PDF with your phone.

Questions people ask

Do I need to install a scanner app?

No. Open this page in Safari or Chrome on your phone, tap "Take a photo", and your camera opens. Each photo is cropped and cleaned in the browser, and the finished PDF downloads straight to Files or Downloads.

How does the automatic crop work?

FormFlow looks for the largest light, rectangular shape in the photo — usually the sheet of paper — and places the four corners on it. If it guesses wrong (a white table, a page held in your hand), drag the four round handles onto the corners of the paper yourself. The page is then straightened as if it had been scanned flat.

Which filter should I use?

Auto colour keeps colour but whitens the paper — good for forms with coloured logos or highlighter. Black & white gives the crispest text and the smallest file, and is what most offices expect for signed paperwork. Grayscale is a middle ground for photos or pencil.

What does "make text searchable" do?

It runs text recognition (OCR) on each page in your browser and adds an invisible text layer behind the image, so you can search, select and copy words in the PDF. The first time it downloads about 7 MB of recognition data from FormFlow, then it works offline. Printed English text works best; handwriting is usually not recognised.

Are my photos uploaded anywhere?

No. Photos are decoded, cropped, filtered and turned into a PDF by your own browser. They are never sent to FormFlow or to any other server, and nothing is kept after you close the tab.

Other FormFlow tools

Fill PDF formType into fillable fields or add text anywhere on a flat PDF.Sign PDFDraw, type or upload a signature. Add initials and dates.Signing packetMark where others sign, add a cover sheet, send it yourself.Create fillable PDFTurn any PDF into a real form with fields people can fill.Extract form dataPull answers from many filled forms into CSV or JSON.Flatten or clear a formLock filled answers in place, strip fields, or reset a form.