Combine scans and document photos into one PDF

Document Studio puts the steps you would otherwise do one by one into a single workflow: scanning with your phone, merging files, redacting and compressing the PDF. It helps when you have several photos of certificates, a contract as a PDF and a photo of an ID card, and the upload form takes one file of up to 2 MB.

For a single task, a dedicated tool is quicker: merge PDF, the document scanner, redact PDF, compress PDF to a target size, JPG to PDF and sign PDF. For product photos for listings, use Seller Studio.

Studio looks for a light sheet of paper on a darker background, such as a table, and cuts it out with perspective correction. It works best when the whole sheet is in the frame and stands out from the background. On a white desk, or when the frame cuts off part of the sheet, detection can fail. The whole photo is then kept and you set the corners by hand.

Background whitening brightens grey paper and the shadow of your phone, and black and white mode keeps only the text. A sheet with proportions close to A4 fills an A4 page. A smaller document, such as an ID card or a receipt, is centred on the page with a 10 mm margin.

The search covers the text of PDF pages that have a text layer, such as statements generated by a bank or an app. It is built for Polish documents and finds Polish ID (PESEL), tax (NIP) and ID card numbers, bank account numbers (IBAN), passport numbers, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, postcodes, dates of birth and first and last names. You can add your own phrases and a regular expression. Photos and scans without a text layer have no text to search, so you cover details on them by hand.

A page with confirmed boxes goes into the file as an image with black boxes, so the covered text does not stay in the text layer. Other PDF pages are copied unchanged and keep selectable text. Studio does not copy document metadata such as the author and title, and it checks the finished file after saving.

In "Output file", pick a limit: 500 KB, 1 MB, 2 MB, 5 MB, 10 MB or your own. Studio counts 1 KB as 1000 bytes, the way most upload forms do. When you download, it picks the resolution of pages saved as images (72 to 200 DPI) and the JPEG quality so the file fits the limit at the best quality it can.

PDF pages with nothing hidden are copied unchanged, so their size stays the same. If the file is still too large, Studio can turn them into images as well, but then their text cannot be selected. If even the lowest settings are not enough, you see a warning. Removing some pages, black and white mode or splitting into separate files helps.

Before you download, Studio flags pages with low resolution (below about 110 DPI when printed), dark, blurry and blank pages, and pages rotated differently from the rest. It also warns when the file is over the limit and when matches are still waiting for your decision. The check does not read the document and cannot guarantee that an office or institution will accept the file. Check the form requirements for format, size and number of files.