You photograph a whiteboard after a meeting, or snap a picture of a paper document — sharing that photo directly usually leaves details hard to make out, and there's no good way to comment on a specific point. Converting it to PDF and cleaning it up first makes it far more useful.
Step 1: convert the photo to a PDF
Your phone's built-in tools are usually enough:
- iPhone: the scan feature in the Files app or Notes turns a photo directly into a PDF, with automatic cropping and perspective correction.
- Android: Google Drive, Adobe Scan, and similar apps offer a similar "photo to PDF" scan feature.
Using the built-in scan feature instead of just renaming the photo file helps because it typically auto-corrects the shooting angle and crops away extra background, looking noticeably cleaner than converting the raw photo directly.
Step 2: load it into the editor
Upload the converted PDF to LocalPDF — at this point it's no different from any other PDF, and every editing tool works normally.
Step 3: caption key content
Whiteboard photos are often scrawled or full of abbreviations — use the "Text" tool to add a fuller caption in nearby blank space, so people who weren't in the meeting can still follow along.
Step 4: circle the key points
Mark the most important conclusions or figures on the whiteboard with "Rectangle" or "Highlight", so someone can catch the key takeaways at a glance instead of deciphering messy handwriting line by line.
Step 5: organize multiple photos
If you took several whiteboard photos (a discussion that unfolded in stages, say), convert each to PDF separately, then use the thumbnail panel's drag-to-reorder feature to merge and arrange the pages from all of them in the order the discussion happened.
Got a whiteboard photo sitting in your camera roll? Convert it to PDF and try captioning it.
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