How to Convert Images to PDF for Free

Page Turner opens PDFs, but music often arrives as pictures: photos of a chart, screenshots, or JPG and PNG files from a notation app or a director's email. Here's how to combine them into one PDF per piece with the free tools already on your phone, tablet, or computer.

Before You Start

• One PDF per piece. Combine all the pages of a song into one file. Each PDF becomes one piece in your set list.
• Put the pages in order first. Most of the methods below follow the order you select the images or their file names, so rename them page 1.jpg, page 2.jpg, and so on if they're out of order.
• Crop and straighten. Use your photo app's crop tool to cut away the table or music stand around each page. Page Turner fits each page to the screen, so less border means bigger notes.
• Still on paper? A scanning app gives sharper, flatter pages than ordinary photos. See How to Scan Sheet Music into a PDF.

iPhone and iPad

With the Files App

1. If the images are in Photos, select them, tap Share, and choose Save to Files.
2. In the Files app, open that folder and tap Select (or ⋯ → Select), then tap each image in page order.
3. Tap ⋯ (More) and choose Create PDF. The new PDF appears in the same folder.
4. Long-press the PDF and choose Rename to give it the piece's name.

Straight from Photos

1. In Photos, tap Select and choose the pages in order.
2. Tap Share, then Print.
3. In Print Options, tap the Share button at the top and choose Save to Files.

Android

1. Open the image in Google Photos, tap ⋮ (More), and choose Print.
2. At the top, change the printer to Save as PDF, then tap the PDF button and choose where to save it.

This makes one page at a time. For a piece with several pages, use the Google Docs method below, which works on any phone. Some gallery apps can also print several selected photos at once; if yours can, choose Save as PDF as the printer the same way.

Mac

With Finder

1. Select the images in Finder. Number their names first, since they're combined in name order.
2. Control-click the selection and choose Quick Actions → Create PDF.

With Preview

1. Select all the images in Finder and open them together in Preview.
2. In the sidebar, drag the thumbnails into page order, then press ⌘A to select them all.
3. Choose File → Print, open the PDF menu at the bottom left, and choose Save as PDF.

Windows

1. Select the images in File Explorer, right-click, and choose Print. (On Windows 11, choose Show more options first.)
2. Set the printer to Microsoft Print to PDF and the layout to Full page photo.
3. Untick Fit picture to frame, which can cut off the edges of the music.
4. Click Print, then name and save the PDF.

Any Device: Google Docs

1. Create a blank document in Google Docs (free with a Google account) in the app or at docs.google.com.
2. Insert the first image, add a page break, insert the next, and so on, one page of music per page.
3. Drag each image's corner so it fills the page. On a computer, File → Page setup can shrink the margins first.
4. Download it as a PDF: File → Download → PDF on a computer, or ⋮ → Share & export → Save as → PDF in the app.

A Word About Online Converters

Plenty of websites will turn images into a PDF for free, but your music is uploaded to someone else's server, and some add watermarks or limit the number of pages. The built-in tools above are just as quick and keep your files on your own device.

Tips for a Clean PDF

• Portrait pages read best on a tablet held upright. Rotate any sideways photos before you combine them.
• Watch the file size. Page Turner accepts PDFs up to 100 MB, which is plenty, but smaller files open and save to everyone's device faster. A few phone photos are usually well under 10 MB.
• Check every page in the finished PDF before the rehearsal: the right order, nothing cut off, nothing upside down.
• Name the PDF after the piece, since the file name is the title everyone sees in the room.

Getting It Into Page Turner

On the home page, tap Choose PDFs… and pick your new PDF, or several at once to start a set list. If the music is on a phone but you lead from a tablet, AirDrop it, save it to iCloud Drive or Google Drive, or email it to yourself first. Then share the room with your group, and everyone's screen follows your page turns.

Questions? See the FAQ or contact us.