How to add an image to a PDF
Last updated: 2026-07-27
Sooner or later a PDF lands in your inbox that needs something added to it: a signature image on a contract, a photo of a receipt stapled into an expense form, a screenshot dropped into page 7 of a report. Going back to the person who made the document is slow, and the print-sign-scan loop degrades the file every time. Placing the image directly onto the PDF and exporting a fresh copy is faster and keeps the original text sharp.
What you need
One PDF, and one image in PNG or JPG format. That format restriction catches more people than you would expect. iPhones default to HEIC, which will not open as an image — go to Settings, Camera, Formats, and choose Most Compatible so future shots save as JPG. For photos you already took, use Share, Save to Files, or simply email the photo to yourself, which usually converts it to JPG on the way out. HEIC, WEBP, GIF, BMP, SVG and a second PDF are all non-starters as the image layer.
The basic sequence
- Open StickPDF in your browser. Nothing to install, no account.
- Click the open button, or drag the PDF straight into the window. All pages render in a single scrolling column.
- Drag your image onto the page you want. It lands exactly where you drop it, not in some default corner you then have to fight.
- Drag the image to fine-tune the position. Drag the corner handle to resize — the aspect ratio is locked, so a face or a logo will not stretch.
- Download the new PDF. Your original file is untouched on disk.
Three ways to get the image in
Drag and drop is the obvious one. For screenshots, Ctrl+V is dramatically faster: take the capture with Win+Shift+S on Windows or Cmd+Shift+4 on a Mac, scroll to the target page, and paste. You never touch the filesystem, which also means no half-named PNGs cluttering your desktop afterwards.
The third route is the + Add image button attached to each page. Because the button belongs to a specific page, there is no ambiguity about where the image will land. That makes it the reliable option in long documents.
The parts that trip people up
The image went onto the wrong page
This is the single most common complaint with any multi-page document, and it is a scrolling problem rather than a bug. When you are scrolled so that a page boundary sits mid-screen, the top margin of the lower page and the bottom margin of the upper page look nearly identical. Drop in that band and the image attaches to whichever page actually owns those coordinates, which may not be the one your eye picked. Before dropping, scroll so the target page is centred, or skip the guesswork and use that page's + Add image button. If it does land wrong, select it and press Delete, then place it again.
You need the same mark on many pages
Contracts, lease agreements and multi-page forms often need an initial or stamp in the same spot on every page. Do not place the image from scratch each time — you will end up with a stamp that is subtly a different size on every page, which looks careless. Instead, get page one exactly right, select the image, press Ctrl+C, then Ctrl+V on each subsequent page. The copy carries its size and any edits with it, including background removal.
A white box is covering the text underneath
A signature or stamp photographed on white paper is not a floating mark — it is a solid white rectangle with a mark in the middle. Over a blank margin nobody notices. Over a table cell or a line of text, the white block is obvious. Use Remove background, which turns white and near-white pixels transparent, and use Restore background if you preferred the original. Whatever you see on screen is what gets embedded in the exported PDF. PNGs that already have transparency keep it automatically — no action needed.
Positioning across a long document
PDF pages are not all the same size. A document assembled from several sources can mix US Letter, A4 and the odd landscape page, so an image sitting 2 cm from the right edge on page 1 will not be 2 cm from the edge on a wider page. Line images up against nearby printed elements — a signature line, a table border — rather than the page edge.
Your files stay on your machine
Everything happens inside the browser. Neither the PDF nor the image is uploaded to a server, which matters when the document is an ID scan, a signed agreement or a payslip. It works on phones and tablets too, with touch drag and resize, and pages scaled to fit the screen width.