iPhone photos to a PDF that Windows opens

Check the PDF before rebuilding it

Open the PDF created on the iPhone and inspect every page in the viewer you plan to use. A PDF generated from HEIC photos does not inherently require the recipient to install HEVC.

Blank pages can have several causes. Check that the source photos open, that the export completed, and that the same PDF works in another viewer. Do not conclude from a blank preview that HEIC was embedded unchanged.

Still images and Live Photo motion

Tinolia converts the still-image files you upload. It does not add the Live Photo video clip to the PDF. If you need a specific frame, export that frame as an image first and inspect the exported file.

If motion is part of the evidence, keep or export the video separately and follow the recipient’s instructions for sending it. Creating a PDF here does not edit your iPhone photo library.

Test it before you send it

This is the cheap check that saves an awkward email. Open the PDF somewhere that is not an Apple device, ideally the kind of machine the person on the other end uses.

1. Mail the PDF to yourself and open it on a Windows PC, or in the browser preview of a webmail.
2. A PDF whose pages display correctly in the recipient's viewer is ready for a compatibility check. A blank page does not reveal the internal image codec; try another viewer or rebuild from source photos that you have verified.

Page size, order, and one PDF or one each

A4 and US Letter put every photo on a document-shaped page, which is what you want for anything that gets printed, stapled, or filed. Image size keeps each photo's own pixel box, so a portrait shot stays portrait and nothing gets letterboxed. That suits an album and wastes paper.

Page order follows the file list, not the capture time, so a batch you tapped out of sequence comes out out of sequence. One PDF is right when a single upload field is waiting. One PDF per photo is right when a clerk files each page under a different heading.

Join the decoded stills

HEIC to PDF decodes iPhone HEIC with libheif on the server and puts each still on its own page. A mixed batch, camera roll plus a screenshot, goes through Images to PDF instead.

Work from the copies you saved out of Files or off a cable copy of DCIM, whichever you have. Either source is fine; the decode happens on the server, not on the phone.

1. From the share sheet, Save to Files first, then drop those files in page order.
2. Pick A4, Letter, or image size, then one PDF or one each. Up to 10 files, 20 MB each.
3. Download, open page one.

A 40 MB PDF still bounces

Check the PDF's actual bytes and the upload or attachment limit. Personal Gmail permits 25 MB of total attachments; other accounts and portals may differ. Smaller source images can reduce the output, provided the document remains legible. Email limits are covered in photos for email.

So bring the long side down toward 1920 px in Resize image, run Compress image, and build the PDF from those. Resizing before the join is much better than compressing the finished PDF, because the pages are just the images you fed in. The caps themselves are in photos for email.

What else stays behind

HDR flattens to an ordinary 8-bit page and transparent pixels come out white, because a page has to be something. There is no OCR here and no password. To add these pages to a PDF you already have, use Merge PDF.

Related guides: iPhone JPEG, HEIC on Windows, iPhone to Android.

Before attaching the PDF in Outlook, compare its actual size with the account limit. For changing future iPhone capture formats, see iPhone JPEG; opening the source HEIC on a PC is HEIC on Windows.