Turn a photo into a scanned PDF
A phone photo of a document is almost a scan — except it is skewed, has the table in the background, and is 4MB of JPEG. What separates a photo from a scan is perspective correction and cropping, not a scanner.
Haven PDF has a built-in Scan & straighten step: add the photo, drag the four corners onto the document edges, and the page is flattened into a straight, rectangular scan. Choose color, grayscale or black-and-white, place it on A4 or keep the image size, and download a PDF. Everything happens in the browser — the photo of your contract or ID never leaves the device, and there is no app to install.
How to
- Open Image to PDF. Works on your phone browser directly — no app needed.
- Add the photo(s). Take the photo flat-on in good light if you can; the tool fixes the rest.
- Drag corners to the page edges. Use “Scan & straighten”: corner handles for precision, edge handles to move a whole side.
- Pick a mode and apply. Grayscale or B/W reads best for text. Apply flattens the scan; download the PDF.
What “Scan & straighten” actually does
You mark the four corners of the page in the photo (corner and edge handles, with a magnifier for precision). The tool applies a perspective transform so the page becomes a true rectangle — the same math dedicated scanner apps use — then applies your color mode: full color, clean grayscale, or high-contrast black-and-white for text documents.
Phone photos come in sideways — handled
Phone cameras store orientation as EXIF metadata, which many PDF tools ignore, producing sideways pages. Haven PDF normalizes orientation on import, so the PDF always matches what you saw on screen.
Multiple pages into one PDF
Add several photos at once — each one gets its own scan step, and each becomes a page of the same PDF. Reorder pages afterwards if needed, then compress the result if a portal has a size cap.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need to install a scanner app?
- No — this runs in the phone or desktop browser. Nothing is installed and the photo is never uploaded to a server.
- Can it fix a photo taken at an angle?
- Yes. Marking the four corners applies a perspective correction that flattens the page into a straight rectangle, like a real scanner output.
- How do I keep the file small?
- Choose grayscale or black-and-white mode, then run the Compress tool with a target size if a portal has a limit.