How to photograph documents so they're readable

A form that can’t be read is a form that gets sent back. Most bad document photos fail in the same four ways: dim light, a tilted phone, a curled page, and a blur nobody noticed. All four can be avoided in under a minute.

Set up the page

Use a flat, plain surface. A table or desk, with the page smoothed flat. A dark surface under white paper helps the edges stand out. If the sheet curls, flatten it with something heavy and clean at the edge, and keep it out of the frame.

Use soft, even light. The best light is a window on a bright day, or a room with the lights on, so that the whole page is lit the same. Avoid one lamp on one side, which throws a gradient across the paper.

Watch for shadows. Your phone and your hand will cast a shadow on the page when you hold them overhead. Look at the screen before you press the button. If a shadow covers the text, move the light or shift to one side and raise the phone a little.

Avoid glare. Glossy paper, laminated cards and plastic covers reflect lights as bright patches that wipe out text. Tilt the page a little, or move the light, until the patch slides out of the way. Don’t use flash.

Take the photo

1. Hold the phone directly above the page, parallel to it. If the top edge is closer to the camera than the bottom, the page looks like a trapezoid and the far lines shrink. Straight-on avoids that.
2. Fill the frame. Get close enough that the page covers most of the screen, with a little background around it so no corner is cut off. Move the phone closer instead of zooming digitally, which only enlarges blur.
3. Steady yourself. Rest your elbows on the table, or lean the phone against a stack of books. If the phone has a timer, a two-second delay stops the tap from shaking it.
4. Tap to focus on the small print, not the middle of the page or a heading. Wait until the screen sharpens.
5. One page per photo. Don’t photograph a spread or two sheets together.
6. Check it at full size. Open the photo and zoom in on the smallest text. Can you read every digit in a date or number? If you can’t, retake it now, while the page is still in front of you.

Turn the photos into a PDF

Once you have a clear photo of every page, the photos to PDF tool combines them in your browser. Add the photos, put them in order with the arrow buttons, choose the page size and press Make PDF. JPEG photos that are already the right way up go in exactly as they are, so no sharpness is lost on the way in. If the file is too big to send, the companion article on why a PDF gets so large explains what to adjust.

The tool also removes each photo’s location, camera details and dates before building the PDF. The pages stay as pictures, so the text can’t be searched or copied.

Tidy up afterward

Photos of IDs, bills, medical forms and contracts are among the most sensitive things on a phone, and they often don’t stay only where you put them.

• Your gallery keeps them. Every photo you take lands in the photo library, where it may be shown in search, in memories and to anyone you hand your phone to.
• Cloud backup may copy them. If photo backup is on, the pictures can be uploaded the moment you take them.
• Deleting is a two-step process. Most phones keep deleted photos for a while in the phone’s deleted folder before they are gone for good. Empty it if you want them gone sooner, and delete them from any cloud copy too.

Once the PDF is saved or sent, delete the loose photos. If you need to keep the PDF, store it somewhere private rather than in the main gallery. For ID and passport scans in particular, see storing ID and passport scans safely, and for stripping location from other photos, removing location from photos.