Article
Prepare your documents for online administrative procedures
Submitting documents for a rental application, a tax declaration or a visa request used to mean photocopies and a trip to an office. Today most of that happens online, which is faster but comes with a real risk: your ID card, your bank statement and your payslips end up on servers you do not control. This article covers the formats portals expect, how to protect your documents before sharing them and how to do all of it without uploading your files anywhere.
What formats online portals accept
Almost every government portal, bank portal and property listing platform accepts PDF. Some also accept JPEG or PNG, but PDF is the safe universal choice: it preserves page layout, supports multi-page documents and does not vary between phone models. If you have photos of your documents (taken with your phone camera), convert them to PDF using the image-to-PDF converter. If you have scanned documents, check that they are not too heavy: many portals cap uploads at 5 MB per file, and a multi-page utility bill from a phone camera can easily exceed that. Compress the PDF before submitting if needed.
Why watermarking your ID before sharing matters
An unmarked copy of your ID card is reusable. Anyone who receives it can submit it to a different service or use it in a fraudulent context. The French data protection authority CNIL, along with regulators in several other countries, recommends adding a visible copy notice to any ID document you share digitally. A useful watermark pattern is: copy issued on [date] for [purpose]. This makes the document identifiable and of limited use outside its original context. The image watermark tool handles photo scans and the PDF watermark tool handles PDF scans. For fields that are not relevant to the specific request, the image redact tool lets you black them out before watermarking.
Metadata and hidden information in your files
A photo taken on a modern phone contains EXIF metadata: GPS coordinates, the exact timestamp, and device model information. When you upload that photo as part of a document submission, the metadata goes with it. The EXIF reader shows you exactly what is embedded in your file. If the GPS coordinates reveal your home address and the submission does not require location data, use the same tool to strip the metadata before converting to PDF or sending. The word-to-pdf converter also removes Office metadata that can contain authorship and editing history.
Doing it all without uploading your files
Every tool mentioned in this article runs entirely in your browser. The image-to-PDF converter, the watermark tools, the PDF form filler, the EXIF reader and the image redact tool all read your files from memory and produce the output locally. No file is transmitted to any server at any point. You can verify this yourself by opening your browser's Network tab while running any of these tools: no outgoing request will carry your file's data. This is the core of the local processing approach: you use the tool, the tool stays in your browser, and your documents stay on your device.
Tools in this article
- Images to PDF Combine one or more images (JPG, PNG, WebP) into a single PDF, right in your browser.
- Add watermark Overlay a text or image watermark on your photos. Opacity, position, tiling, all in the browser.
- Watermark PDF Add a text or image watermark to every page of a PDF, without uploading.
- Redact image regions Blur or black-box sensitive areas of your images before sharing, no upload.
Frequently asked questions
What should I do if a portal rejects my PDF?
The most common reasons for rejection are file size (compress the PDF), password protection (the tools here produce unprotected files by default), an incorrect number of pages or an unsupported PDF version. Check the portal's help page for specific requirements. If size is the issue, run the PDF through the compressor and resubmit. If the portal requires a specific PDF version, try the PDF repair tool, which re-serializes the file in a compatible format.
Do I need to keep the original documents after converting them?
Yes. Keep the original photos or scans separate from any converted or watermarked copies. If a subsequent request requires different watermarking, a different format or a higher resolution, you will need the original. It is also good practice to keep a dated record of what you submitted and to whom, in case a dispute arises later about what information was shared.