How to add an image to a PDF

How to add an image to a PDF in PDFZyro

1. 1Create a free PDFZyro account, open Edit PDF on the Home page and choose the PDF from your documents, or upload it.
2. 2Choose Add picture in the toolbar (or press I) and click where the image should go. On a computer you can also drag the Add picture button onto the page.
3. 3Choose a JPG or PNG file from your computer, phone or tablet. It's placed where you clicked, at a size that fits the page.
4. 4Drag the picture to move it, and drag its corner to resize it; it keeps its proportions. With the keyboard, Alt and the arrow keys resize it.
5. 5To trim the edges, set Crop in the properties panel: the percentage to cut from the left, right, top or bottom. Replace… swaps in another picture in the same place, and Delete removes it.
6. 6Click Save (or press Ctrl+S). The PDF with your picture is saved as a new version, and the version without it stays in the history. Download it, or keep working on it.

Changing a picture that's already in the PDF

Edit also works on pictures that are already part of the document, such as an old logo on a letterhead or a photo in a brochure. With Edit text & select chosen, click the picture. You can move it, resize it, crop it, replace it with a new file or delete it, and Undo changes puts it back as it was.

When you replace a picture, the new one is fitted inside the space of the old one and keeps its own proportions, so the rest of the page doesn't move. Your unsaved changes are kept as a draft, so nothing is lost if you close the page before saving.

Other ways to put a picture on a PDF in PDFZyro

• A logo or picture on every page: open Watermark on the Home page, choose Picture, then set its width, opacity, rotation and position. Choose whether it sits in front of the page or behind the text and pictures, and which pages get it, then click Apply and save.
• A picture as a stamp: open Stamp on the Home page (or Comment), choose Image stamp, pick a PNG or JPEG and click where it goes. A stamp is an annotation, like a comment, so people with a PDF editor can move or remove it later.
• A photo or scan as a whole new page: turn the picture into a PDF with Images to PDF, then add its page with Organize pages or Merge.
• A picture of your signature: use Sign instead. You can upload a picture of your signature there, and the signed PDF is sealed so any later change can be detected.

Other ways to add an image to a PDF

• Adobe Acrobat: the paid version's Edit PDF tools can add an image to a page. The free Acrobat Reader can't change the content of pages.
• Preview on a Mac: there's no add picture button, but you can open the picture in Preview, select all and copy it, then paste it into the PDF and drag it into place.
• Firefox: the browser's built-in PDF viewer has an image button in its editing toolbar. Download the PDF afterwards so the picture is kept.
• Microsoft Word: open the PDF in Word, which converts it into an editable document, add the picture with Insert, then Pictures, and save it as a PDF again. The layout can shift during the conversion, so this suits simple documents best.

Tips for pictures in PDFs

• Use PNG for logos, signatures and drawings: edges stay sharp and a transparent background stays transparent. Use JPG for photos, which gives smaller files.
• Use a picture that's big enough for print. Around 300 pixels for every inch it will cover on paper looks sharp, so a logo printed 2 inches wide needs about 600 pixels.
• Don't use a huge photo for a small space. A picture straight from a phone camera can add several megabytes. Resize it first, or compress the PDF afterwards.
• Crop before you add it if part of the picture is private. Cropping in a PDF hides the edges, but the whole picture stays inside the file.
• Check the page after saving, at full size and printed if it matters, before you send the document.

Why you can't simply paste a picture into any PDF

A PDF isn't a word processor document. Each page is a finished layout, with text and pictures placed at fixed positions, and most PDF readers are made to show those pages, not to change them. That's why the free reader on your computer usually has no button for adding a picture.

A PDF editor writes the picture into the page itself, at the position and size you chose, so it looks the same everywhere. Because nothing re-flows, a new picture doesn't push text out of the way: place it in an empty area, or cover what's underneath on purpose.