How to Add an Image to a PDF (Free, No Adobe)

You have a finished PDF and one thing missing from it: a logo on the letterhead, a photo in the report, a scanned signature on the last page, a stamp that says the invoice is paid. Adobe will happily sell you a subscription for this. You don't need it — adding an image to an existing PDF is a free, two-minute job in your browser, and there are decent fallbacks on every platform.

The direct way: edit the PDF in your browser

1. Open our PDF editor and drop your PDF in.
2. Select the Image tool (or press I).
3. Choose your PNG or JPEG, then click where it should go.
4. Drag the corners to resize, drag the middle to reposition. Repeat on any page.
5. Download. The image is embedded into the PDF itself, not floating on top.

Two details worth knowing. First, transparency works: a PNG with a transparent background (a signature, a logo) sits cleanly over whatever's behind it, no white box. Second, this all happens locally — the editor runs in your browser and the PDF never gets uploaded, which matters more than usual here because "add an image" so often means "add my signature to a contract."

If the image is a signature

Don't photograph paper if you can avoid it — the gray shadow never quite disappears. Our sign tool lets you draw the signature directly and place it on as many pages as needed; the full walkthrough is in how to sign a PDF free. If you must use a photo of an ink signature, crop it tight and boost the contrast before inserting it.

Platform fallbacks

• Mac (Preview): Preview has no true insert-image button, but there's a workaround: open the image in Preview, select all, copy — then in the PDF, paste. It works on many PDFs, though the pasted image sometimes lands as an annotation that other viewers move or drop. Fine for personal use; for anything you're sending, embed it properly instead.
• Word: if the PDF originated as a Word document, convert it back (PDF to Word), insert the picture in Word, and export to PDF again. Best for documents you'll keep editing anyway.
• The nuclear option: convert the page to an image (PDF to JPG), composite in any image editor, convert back. Only worth it for one-page documents — you lose selectable text on that page.

Common questions

• Will the image print? Yes — embedded images are part of the page, unlike sticky-note annotations.
• Can the recipient move or remove it? Not casually. If you want extra certainty (for a signature or a paid stamp), run the file through our flatten tool afterward, which bakes everything into the page.
• The PDF got big. Phone photos are 4–12 MB each. Compress the PDF after adding them, or shrink the photo before inserting.