How to Combine Images Into One PDF on Mac

A folder of screenshots or scanned JPGs is awkward to email; one PDF is not. macOS can staple images into a single PDF two ways: a one-click Finder Quick Action when speed matters, and a Preview route when you want full control over page order and size.

The fast way: Finder's Create PDF Quick Action

1. In Finder, select the images. Cmd-click them in the order you want the pages — selection order becomes page order.
2. Right-click the selection and choose Quick Actions → Create PDF.
3. A new PDF appears in the same folder, named after one of the images. Rename it and you're done.

Each image becomes one page, sized to the image. Your originals are untouched — if the result is wrong, just delete the PDF and try again. If the order came out scrambled, reselect the files one by one in sequence, or fix the order afterwards in Preview's sidebar (View → Thumbnails, then drag the pages around and save).

The controlled way: Preview + Print to PDF

When you need to reorder pages, drop a stray image, or force everything onto uniform paper sizes, build the PDF in Preview:

1. Select all the images in Finder and press Cmd+O (or right-click → Open With → Preview). They open as one Preview window with a thumbnail sidebar. If the sidebar is hidden, choose View → Thumbnails.
2. Drag thumbnails to set the exact page order. Select any image you don't want and press Delete to drop it from the batch (the file itself isn't deleted).
3. Press Cmd+A in the sidebar so every image is selected.
4. Choose File → Print…, then click the PDF pop-up menu in the corner of the print dialog and choose Save as PDF.

The print dialog is the secret weapon here: it lets you pick a paper size, scale images to fit, and print multiple images per page before saving — handy when mixing portrait screenshots with landscape photos.

Which route should you use?

• Quick Action: receipts, scans, quick screenshot bundles — anything where "one image, one page" is fine.
• Preview: anything a client will see, mixed orientations, or when page order matters and you want to eyeball it first.

Either way the output is a normal PDF — you can reorder or delete its pages later in Preview like any other document.

Details that trip people up

• HEIC works fine. iPhone photos in HEIC format go straight into either method — no need to convert to JPG first. The PDF renders them like any other image.
• Page size follows the image. With the Quick Action, a 400px receipt scan makes a small page and a 4000px photo makes a huge one. If a recipient will print the PDF, use the Preview route and let the print dialog scale everything to A4 or US Letter.
• Quality is preserved. Neither method recompresses your images aggressively, which also means a PDF built from 30 full-resolution photos will be enormous. Downsize the images first, or compress the finished PDF, before emailing it.
• Alphabetical surprises. If you select files with a drag-rectangle rather than Cmd-clicking, pages follow Finder's current sort order. Sorting the folder by name first (and renaming files 01.jpg, 02.jpg…) is the most reliable way to control long sequences.

Going the other direction?

If you have a PDF and need images instead, Preview exports pages as JPG or PNG too, with control over the resolution — see how to convert a PDF to JPG or PNG on Mac. Between the two guides, you can round-trip anything: images into a document, document back into images.