Convert PSD to PDF
PDF is what you send when the other person must see it exactly as you made it, on any device, without owning your software. A PSD becomes a one-page PDF holding the flattened composite — a raster page, which is what a Photoshop document honestly is, rather than a claim of vectors that were never there.
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Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- One page, sized to the document
- The flattened composite, never a single layer
- Opens on any device without Photoshop
- No watermark
How to use PSD to PDF
- 1
Add the PSD
Drop the file in. The flattened composite is read — the image the document shows when it opens, not one of the layers behind it.
- 2
It becomes one page
The page is sized to the document. There is no scaling to A4 and no letterbox, because the artwork's own dimensions are the ones you chose.
- 3
Download the PDF
It opens in every browser, phone and reader without any Adobe software.
How it works
The flattened composite is decoded from the PSD, then placed on a single PDF page sized to the document's own dimensions. Nothing is scaled to a paper size and nothing is re-compressed beyond what putting an image in a PDF requires.
What a PDF of a PSD actually is
It is worth being plain about this, because the format's reputation causes confusion.
PDF can hold vectors — real shapes and real text that stay sharp at any zoom and can be selected, searched and edited. It can also hold a picture on a page. Both are valid PDFs and they behave nothing alike.
A Photoshop document is pixels. Its type is rasterized, its shapes are rasterized, its effects are rasterized. So a PDF made from it holds a picture, and no converter can produce vectors that the source never had. Anyone promising "editable PDF from PSD" is either describing a different source format or running optical character recognition and hoping.
If your artwork started life in Illustrator or as EPS, /ai-to-pdf and /eps-to-pdf preserve the real vectors — verified: the output embeds no images at all and still renders sharply at 600 dpi.
Why PDF rather than PNG or JPG
Three reasons, and none of them is quality.
It is fixed. A PDF specifies a page of a specific size. Send a PNG and the recipient sees it at whatever size their viewer decides; send a PDF and it has proportions you chose.
It is universal in a different way. Every device opens PNG, but a PDF is what business software, printers and approval workflows expect. A print shop asked for a PDF means a PDF.
It is a document. You can merge it, add pages, sign it, password-protect it with /protect-pdf. A PNG is a picture and stays one.
Keep the layered file
The PDF is a finished artifact. The layers, masks and editable text are not in it, because a PDF page has nowhere to put them.
Send the PDF. Keep the PSD.
Fonts are the thing that goes wrong
If a PDF made from a design file comes back with the wrong type, this is usually why — and it is a reason the raster route has an advantage.
When live text is carried into a PDF, the fonts have to come with it, embedded in the file. If they are not, the reader substitutes something it does have and the layout shifts: line breaks move, a heading wraps, a carefully set price list stops lining up. Designers convert type to outlines before sending precisely to avoid this.
A PSD has already settled the question. Its text was rasterized the moment the composite was written, so what reaches the PDF is a picture of the type set exactly as you set it. Nothing can substitute a font in a picture. You lose selectable text and gain certainty, which for an approval PDF is usually the better trade.
Examples
A design sent for approval
The client opens it in a browser or a phone. No Adobe account, no missing fonts, no "which layer am I looking at".
One page of a longer document
Convert each page, then join them with /merge-pdf into the document you actually wanted to send.
Frequently asked questions
Will the PDF be vector or editable?
Neither, and no converter can make it so. A Photoshop document is pixels — that is what Photoshop is for. A PDF made from one contains a raster image on a page, so it will not scale up indefinitely and its text cannot be selected or searched. Tools that imply otherwise are describing a conversion from Illustrator or InDesign, which are vector programs. For artwork that IS vector, /ai-to-pdf and /eps-to-pdf keep it that way.
What size is the page?
The document's own size. A 2000 by 3000 pixel PSD becomes a page with those proportions, so nothing is cropped, letterboxed or scaled to fit a paper size you did not ask for. If you need it on A4 specifically, a printer's "fit to page" does that better than a conversion would.
Can I put several PSDs in one PDF?
Convert each one and join them with /merge-pdf, which keeps the pages in the order you list them. That is two steps rather than one, and it means the page order is a decision you make rather than one the upload order makes for you.
What happens to transparency?
A PDF page has a background, so transparent areas end up white. If the transparency matters — a logo to be placed over something else — a PNG is the format for that, not a PDF.
Is my file uploaded?
Yes. Reading PSD needs software that runs on a server, which is why the file cannot stay on your machine for this one. The upload and everything made from it are deleted within 30 minutes by a timer, and nothing is stored, indexed or looked at in the meantime. There is no account and no history.
Further reading
- Flattening a PDF Made It 14 Times Bigger and Deleted Every Searchable WordFlattening is what you do when a form must stop being fillable or a signature must stop being movable, and it is often described as if it just locks things down. It does more than that: it replaces the page with an image of the page, and everything that made the page text goes with it.
- OCR Recovered Every Character Flattening Had RemovedA flattened PDF has no text layer, which is often described as the text being lost. It is not lost, it is only no longer written down — the words are still drawn on the page, and reading them off a picture is exactly what OCR does.