Convert a folder of images into a multi-page pdf file using command line tools

Last time I used convert for such a task I explicitly specified the size of the destination via resizing:

$ i=150; convert a.png b.png -compress jpeg -quality 70 \
      -density ${i}x${i} -units PixelsPerInch \
      -resize $((i*827/100))x$((i*1169/100)) \
      -repage $((i*827/100))x$((i*1169/100)) multipage.pdf

The convert command doesn't always use DPI as default density/page format unit, thus we explicitly specify DPI with the -units option (otherwise you may get different results with different versions/input format combinations). The new size (specified via -resize) is the dimension of a DIN A4 page in pixels. The resize argument specifies the maximal page size. What resolution and quality to pick exactly depends on the use case - I selected 150 DPI and average quality to save some space while it doesn't look too bad when printed on paper.

Note that convert by default does not change the aspect ratio with the resize operation:

Resize will fit the image into the requested size. It does NOT fill, the requested box size.

(ImageMagick manual)

Depending on the ImageMagick version and the involved input formats it might be ok to omit the -repage option. But sometimes it is required and without that option the PDF header might contain too small dimensions. In any case, the -repage shouldn't hurt.

The computations use integer arithmetic since bash only supports that. With zsh the expressions can be simplified - i.e. replaced with $((i*8.27))x$((i*11.69)).

Lineart Images

If the PNG files are bi-level (black & white a.k.a lineart) images then the img2pdf tool yields superior results over ImageMagick convert. That means img2pdf is faster and yields smaller PDFs.

Example:

$ img2pdf -o multipage.pdf a.png b.png

or:

$ img2pdf --pagesize A4 -o multipage.pdf a.png b.png

I assume you want to add a border of, say 30px, on all four sides. Use the -border option for the size and -bordercolor for the colour:

convert -border 30 -bordercolor white input.png output.pdf

More information can be found here: Imagemagick - Adding/Removing Image Edges

If you want the final PDF to be of a particular size, you can use the following options:

convert \
  -page A4 \
  -gravity northwest \
  -border 30 \
  -bordercolor white \
  input.png output.pdf