Merge HEIF to PDF

How to Merge HEIF Images into a PDF Online

1. Upload Your HEIF Files: Drag and drop or click "+ Add Files" to load HEIF (and HEIC) photos straight from your iPhone, iPad, or any folder synced from iCloud Photos / OneDrive. Batch upload is supported — combine an entire shoot, a multi-page scan, or a slide deck in one pass. Files stay in your browser session.
2. Pick the Merge Mode: Under Combine?, choose Single PDF (default) to stitch every image into one document in upload order, or Individual PDFs to wrap each HEIF in its own PDF and download them as a ZIP.
3. Set Layout, Paper Size, Margins, and Placement (Optional): Pick Portrait or Landscape under Page layout. Under Paper size, choose Original (page matches the image's pixel dimensions), A4 (default), Letter, Legal, A3, Tabloid, Executive, A5, Arch A, or Arch B. Under Margin, pick No margin (0"), Narrow (0.5"), Moderate (0.75×1"), Normal (1"), or Large (2×1"). Under Image placement choose Cover (fills the page edge-to-edge, may crop) or Contained (full image fits within margins); set Image alignment to Top, Center, or Bottom. Drop Image Quality (%) below 75 to shrink the file, or pick a Compression Type preset (Screen, Ebook, Default, Prepress, Printer). Use Image Transparency → Removed to flatten any alpha channel onto white.
4. Merge and Download: Click Merge and download your PDF (or ZIP of PDFs). No sign-up, no watermark, no email gating.

Why Merge HEIF Images into a PDF?

HEIF (High Efficiency Image File Format, ISO/IEC 23008-12) was standardised by MPEG in 2015 and adopted by Apple as the default photo format on iPhone and iPad starting with iOS 11 in 2017. Encoded with the HEVC codec, a HEIF file is roughly half the size of an equivalent-quality JPEG — which is great for camera roll storage but awkward the moment you need to share, print, sign, or archive the images. Native HEIF decode only landed in Windows 10 build 1803 (April 2018) behind a paid HEVC extension, and many older PDF readers, government upload portals, and email clients still refuse .heic/.heif files outright. Wrapping the photos in a PDF sidesteps all of that — PDF readers ship on every desktop OS, every mobile OS, and every modern browser.

• Document scans from the iPhone Camera app — A passport page, a lease, or a receipt photographed as HEIF becomes a single multi-page PDF ready for HR portals, government form uploads, or insurance claims that accept PDF but reject HEIC.
• Photo books and portfolios — Pick Original paper size with No margin and Cover placement to make a borderless print-ready PDF where each page matches its photo's aspect ratio exactly.
• Email-friendly shareables — A 40-photo HEIF album at 3 MB each (~120 MB) is too large for Gmail's 25 MB attachment cap and Outlook's 20 MB default; drop Image Quality to 60 and pick the Screen compression preset to land the merged PDF under both limits.
• Print shops and copy centers — Most local print shops accept PDF only; converting your HEIF holiday photos to Letter or A4 at 100% quality with the Prepress preset preserves color fidelity for prints up to 8×10".
• Archival and legal — PDF/A-style flattened, single-file archives are easier to back up and timestamp than loose HEIF photos scattered across an iCloud library.
• Cross-platform sharing with Windows and Android users — Sending HEIF directly to a Pixel running Android 7 or Windows 10 build 1607 or older fails silently; a PDF works on every version since the late 1990s.

Need to send the photos as standalone images instead? Use HEIF to JPG or HEIC to JPG. To stitch multiple PDFs together afterwards, use Merge PDF, and to shrink the resulting file further, run Compress PDF. To merge mixed HEIF + JPG + PNG into a single PDF, switch to Image to PDF.

HEIF vs JPG vs PDF — Format Quick Comparison

Paper Size & Margin Reference

Compression Preset Cheat Sheet

These names mirror Ghostscript's standard PDFSETTINGS profiles — the same presets Adobe Acrobat and most PDF tools expose.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I control the page order before merging?

Yes. Files are added to the queue in upload order; drag the file tiles to reorder them before clicking Merge. The first tile becomes page 1 of the PDF. iPhone photos sorted by date in the Photos app preserve their order when bulk-shared, but if you AirDrop or share through several apps, the order can shuffle — reorder in the queue rather than re-uploading.

What's the difference between Cover and Contained placement?

Contained (default) fits the whole image inside the page minus the chosen margin, leaving white space if the image's aspect ratio doesn't match the paper. Cover scales the image up to fill the entire page edge-to-edge — anything outside the paper aspect is cropped. Use Contained for documents and photo galleries where the full frame matters; use Cover with Original paper size for borderless photo books.

Will the PDF preserve the full quality of my HEIF photos?

The Image Quality (%) slider sets the JPEG quality of each image as it's embedded in the PDF (HEIF / HEVC cannot be embedded directly in PDF, so images are transcoded to JPEG inside the container). At 90–100% the result is visually indistinguishable from the original on any normal display. The default of 75% is a good balance between fidelity and file size. If you need true lossless embedding, convert to PNG first and use Image to PDF instead — but expect the PDF to be 3–8× larger.

My iPhone takes HDR HEIF — does color get preserved?

iPhone 12 and later capture HDR HEIF with a 10-bit P3 color profile and a gain map. When the file is transcoded to JPEG for PDF embedding, output is downsampled to 8-bit sRGB (the JPEG spec's ceiling). Highlights and saturated colors will look closer to the standard-dynamic-range version of the photo. For HDR-preserving workflows, keep the HEIF native and share via Apple platforms; for PDF sharing, accept the SDR conversion.

Why does my merged PDF look fuzzy on screen?

Most likely the Screen compression preset is selected (default for image-to-PDF merges). Screen downsamples embedded images to 72 DPI — fine for viewing on a phone, soft on a Retina display, and unprintable. Switch to Ebook (150 DPI) for tablet/e-reader, or Prepress (300 DPI) for anything you'll print. You can also bump Image Quality (%) to 90+.

Can I add password protection or watermarks to the merged PDF?

This tool focuses on layout and compression — no password, watermark, or signature overlay. After merging, run the output through Compress PDF for further size reduction. If you need passwords, e-signatures, or redaction, those are different tools (Adobe Acrobat, Preview on macOS, or a dedicated PDF editor).

Does this work with .heic files too, or only .heif?

Both. .heic is the file extension Apple uses for HEIF images encoded with HEVC — they're the same container with different extensions. The tool accepts both. If your iPhone is set to capture in "High Efficiency" (Settings → Camera → Formats), photos save as .heic; if you AirDrop to a Mac and re-export, you may see .heif. Either works.

What happens to Live Photos, bursts, and image sequences?

A Live Photo is a HEIC still plus a short MOV video — only the still image gets embedded in the PDF; the video component is dropped. Burst-mode HEIF files (image sequences inside a single container) export their cover image only. For multi-frame extraction, use Apple's Photos app to "Save as Photo" before uploading.

Will the merged PDF work on Android, Windows, and older devices?

Yes — that's the main point of merging HEIF to PDF. The output PDF embeds JPEG-encoded images inside a standard PDF 1.4+ container, which any PDF reader from the last 20 years can open: Adobe Reader, Preview on macOS, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Google Drive, Android's default file viewers, and government upload portals that block HEIC.

Is anything uploaded to your servers?

Processing happens in your browser session and files are deleted after your session ends. No account is required and there are no watermarks, file-count limits, or hidden Pro tiers gating the merge.