How to convert JPG to PDF on Mac — Finder, Preview, or a browser tab
To convert a JPG to PDF on a Mac, Control-click it in Finder and choose Quick Actions, then Create PDF. For a fixed A4 or Letter page with margins and a drag-to-order list, open JPG to PDF in Safari; the file is built on the Mac.
A Mac turns a JPG into a PDF without any help, twice over: once from Finder and once from Preview. So this is mostly a page about which built-in route to use, followed by the short list of cases where a browser tab does something those two do not, and one thing it does to colour that is worth knowing first.
How do I convert JPG to PDF on a Mac?
Control-click the JPG in Finder, choose Quick Actions, then Create PDF. A PDF appears beside the original. If Create PDF is not listed, click More in the same menu. To set the name and location yourself, open the image in Preview instead, choose File then Export, and pick PDF from the Format menu.
Preview adds two options in that Export sheet that Finder skips: a Quartz filter to apply to the image, and an option to encrypt the PDF with a password. For one photo that needs to become one PDF, either built-in route beats opening a browser.
How do I combine several JPGs into one PDF on a Mac?
Select the images in Finder in the order you want them, Control-click, and choose Quick Actions then Create PDF. Apple documents that the files land in the PDF in the order you selected them. That is quick for three images and fiddly for thirty, because the order lives in how you clicked and one slip means starting the selection again.
When is a browser tool the better option?
When the order needs to be visible, or the pages need to behave like paper. JPG to PDF shows the images as a list you drag into order, and offers A4 or Letter pages in portrait or landscape, with each image centred inside a 24-point margin. It works the same in Safari and Chrome, and the PDF is built on the Mac.
Open the tool
Open JPG to PDF in Safari or Chrome. Nothing to install, no account.
Add the JPGs
Drag them in from a Finder window, or click the drop area to browse. The count and the total size appear underneath, and you can keep adding.
Drag them into order
Move any row up or down by its handle. The PDF follows the list top to bottom, one image per page.
Pick a page size
Fit to image, A4 or Letter. Choosing A4 or Letter reveals the portrait and landscape buttons.
Create the PDF
Click Create PDF. With several images the button counts the pages back to you, and the file downloads as babapdf_images.pdf.
What happens to the colours?
The pixels are untouched and the colour label is dropped. We converted a JPEG tagged with Display P3, the wide-colour profile recent iPhone cameras write into their photos, and read the PDF back. The image was labelled plain device RGB, and the PDF contained no colour profile of its own.
The profile is not deleted. The JPEG goes into the PDF byte for byte, so the P3 profile is still sitting inside the embedded image data, and the PDF simply does not point at it. A viewer that takes the colour space from the label the PDF gives the image, which is where the format says to look, is told plain RGB. For most photos nobody will see a difference. For a wide-colour shot with saturated reds or greens, the PDF can look a little flatter than the same picture in Photos, depending on the viewer, so check it before it goes to a printer who cares.
The same test settled three other questions. A progressive JPEG converts. A CMYK JPEG from a print workflow converts too, and is labelled CMYK in the PDF. And the PDF is the size of the photo plus about a kilobyte: a 35,140-byte JPEG produced a 36,226-byte PDF, because nothing is re-encoded.
How do I turn a screenshot into a PDF on a Mac?
Use PNG to PDF, because a Mac saves screenshots as PNG unless you have changed that setting. The file picker in the JPG tool greys PNGs out, and one dragged in anyway stops the conversion with an error naming the file. Create PDF in Finder is not fussy about image format.
Screenshots walk straight into the page-size trap too. Fit to image multiplies pixel dimensions by 0.75 to get PDF points, and Retina screens produce a lot of pixels: a 3024 by 1964 pixel image became a page 31.5 inches wide and 20.5 inches tall in our test. It looks normal on screen and startles whoever prints it. Choose Letter or A4 when the result has to behave like paper. The general JPG guide walks through that arithmetic.
How can I convert a TIFF or HEIC file to a PDF on my Mac?
With Preview or Finder, not with this tool. JPG to PDF embeds JPEG data and refuses everything else, including a file that was only renamed to .jpg. Preview opens TIFF and HEIC and exports either as a PDF, and the Quick Actions menu in Finder has a Convert Image option that turns an iPhone .heic into a .jpeg first.
One more thing that follows a photo onto the Mac: a shot taken with the phone turned sideways stays sideways, because the rotation flag is not read. The iPhone guide has the measurement, and Rotate PDF fixes the page afterwards. The images are read and the PDF is assembled in the browser tab; the file is not sent anywhere.
