Why does a portrait photo appear sideways in a PDF?
A photo can store landscape-shaped pixels plus an EXIF instruction to display them upright. Just PDF Tools reads that orientation when converting JPG and PNG images and applies it to the PDF.
Fit to image or A4?
Fit to image uses the image’s oriented dimensions for the page. A4 uses a portrait page with margins and fits the image inside it without stretching. A landscape photo on portrait A4 therefore has more blank space.
How we handle orientation
The implementation supports the eight EXIF orientation values, including mirrored variants. Automated tests check orientation transforms and page dimensions. An image with missing or incorrect orientation metadata can still appear wrong; rotate and export it in an image editor before retrying.
Formats and quality
Choose JPG or PNG; HEIC and RAW are not accepted. JPEG bytes are embedded without recompression, and images keep their aspect ratio. Creating a PDF does not add detail to a blurry image, remove image metadata or turn photographed text into searchable text.