How Do I Create a PDF from Images?

How do I create a PDF from images?

Below are some options to get good quality results when converting multiple images into a flowing PDF for reading. Some tools are better for paginated output, and some tools are better for a single, long page. I recommend to start with the free options and progress to the non-free options if there are issues that can't be resolved. Generally the non-free options handle corner cases better. On Linux and Mac, printing to a PDF is built into the OS. On these platforms any tool that lets you create the layout you want and print it will work - just print to a PDF. For example, create a simple HTML document and print it. Free On Linux, Mac, and Windows (technical level. easiest) OpenOffice can create a flowing, multi-page document with images in it analogous to Word. It also has a PDF exporter built in. You may have to tweak the export quality settings to get high quality output, but the capability is in there. (technical level. easiest-moderate) Inkscape can do a number of conversions to PDF. The simplest is to open an image in Inkscape, then save it as a PDF. The created PDF will have the dimensions of the image. Inkscape also supports creating a sheet and adding images to it, as Illustrator does. The sheet can be saved as a PDF (see the layout notes for Illustrator below). (technical level. harder) LaTeX (document preparation) has very good pagination support. It's written like an HTML document, but the layout engine handles page breaks better than browsers (which usually span images across page boundaries, unless using some special page CSS). Depending on what you want - a single flowing layout or a paged layout - this may be a good option to explore, especially since LaTex can be used in a script to automatically generate a PDF from a dir of images. Non-Free On Mac and Windows (technical level. easiest) Microsoft Word to add the images to a flowing, multi-page document. It's easy to get a generic layout for reading. A PDF exporter is built in to 2007+. For earlier versions you can download a plugin from the MS website. (technical level. moderate) Online Pdf Creator Illustrator to add the images to a large sheet, which can be exported to a single page PDF (exporter built in). The upside of this approach is that you can use non-conventional layouts of the images not easily done in Word; however, the downside is that creating a simple flowing document is harder than in Word. Also the PDF generated from a single sheet will not have page breaks - it will be a single long page. This might be ideal for your case.