A4 plus a phone photo pdf. You merge. The file opens. First pages look like a normal office paper. Last page is a tall phone photo, or a square, or a wide screenshot. Merge PDF keeps both sizes. It does not crop. It does not magically print everything on A4. The print shop will notice. They will ask, sir this last page is different, print as fit to page or actual. You will be standing there with a token number and a decision you should have made at home.
I tell people before they go. Merge is glue. Glue does not resize the paper. If you need one size, make the odd page into A4 first, usually by putting the photo on a A4 pdf, or photographing against a A4 sheet so the page looks similar.
A4 plus a phone photo pdf
Typical set. University form, downloaded A4. Plus a signed declaration you photographed on the phone, then JPG to PDF. The jpg to pdf uses the image size. A phone photo is not A4. Merge them. Form is A4. Sign page is whatever. Email to a office often still works. They view on a screen. The sign is big or small on the screen, they pinch zoom. Print is the fight.
Another set. GST invoices screenshots, mixed with a A4 covering letter. Screenshots are phone wide. Covering letter is A4. Merge. The booklet looks drunk, like the WhatsApp paragraph but in paper form. Print shop boy will scale each page to A4. Then the screenshot letters shrink and the covering letter looks normal. Or he prints actual size and the screenshot hangs off. Ask him to fit all to A4 if you did not fix it.
I work in a small city office. We send a lot of merges. For email I accept mixed size. For a spiral bind, I do not. Spiral bind with one tiny page in the middle looks like a joke. The tiny page is the agreement photo. Of course it is the important one.
How the photo became a pdf. If you drop a jpg into jpg to pdf, you get a page that matches the picture. If the picture is portrait from a phone, the pdf page is portrait and not A4 ratios. Fine for reading. Odd for a copier that eats A4.
You can photo the paper on a A4 background. Put the signed sheet on a white A4. Fill the frame with the A4, not with only the signature. Then the page ratio is closer. Not perfect. Closer. Merge looks less crazy.
Merge keeps both sizes, it does not crop
Merge does not crop. If you wanted only the signature area as a full page, crop in the phone gallery first, then jpg to pdf, then merge. If you do not crop, you get a lot of floor in the photo. Floor on a A4 print is a waste of toner. The shop will still print the floor.
Up and Down arrows change order, not size. First file on top. Signed page at the end, that other article. Order and size are two different problems. I have fixed order and still had the size fight at the copier.
Password files will not merge. Mixed size plus password is two errors. Remove password first.
20 mb. Mixed size does not mean mixed weight. A small looking phone page can be a 8 mb photo. A A4 Word pdf can be 200 kb. The merge is 8.2 mb. Check with File Size Checker. If Gmail complains, compress the photo with Compress Image before you make the pdf. We are not Adobe. We will not crush the merged pdf in the browser like Acrobat.
Rotate. A landscape screenshot merged with portrait A4. Some pages sideways. Rotate PDF turns the whole file the same way. If only one page is sideways, rotate that small pdf before merge. After merge, one rotate would spin the A4 too. I did that. Printed a form sideways. Paid again.
Page count. PDF Page Count still works. Count does not care about size. Six pages is six pages, even if one is a stamp.
Print preview on your own PC if you have a printer. You will see the odd page. If you do not have a printer, open the pdf, look at the page thumbnail strip. The thumbnails will show a different shape. That is your warning.
Print shop will notice, fix before you go
Tell the boy, fit to A4, all pages. Most of them know. Some are in a rush and they print actual. Actual makes a phone pdf print with huge margins or cut edges depending the driver. Stay till the first page of the odd sheet comes out. Look. Then say ok for the rest.
Better fix. Recreate the odd page. Print the photo at home if you can, on A4, sign again if needed, scan or photo the A4. Merge two A4s. Cleanest. Not always possible when the sign is already on a small pad paper.
Second better. Insert the photo into Word on a A4 page, export pdf, merge with the form. That needs Word. Many students do this. The photo sits in a box on A4. Size problem gone. Quality depends how you insert. Do not stretch.
Third. Live with mixed size for a email. Write in the mail, last page is the signed photo, please view on screen. Some clerks will. Some will print and complain. You cannot win all.
If you split later, Split PDF is range only. From-to. The odd size page is still odd after split. Split does not normalise size. Same glue story, reverse.
I keep a folder of “print ready” vs “email ready”. Email ready can be mixed. Print ready I try same size. Extra ten minutes at the desk. Saves twenty at the shop and a argument in a queue that smells like toner.
Last check before merge download. Look at the list of files. A4 form first. Photo pdf last. Then download. Then open thumbnails. If one thumbnail is a different rectangle, you know. Decide email or print. If print, go back, make that page A4-ish. If email, send. Do not discover the different rectangle when the bind is already done and the shop says no returns on spiral.