Loading the workspace
OCR a scanned PDF
OCR runs optical character recognition over a scanned PDF and adds an invisible text layer behind the image. The page still looks exactly the same, but the words can now be searched, selected and copied.
Recognition uses Tesseract on the server, so the file is uploaded, processed and deleted within the same request.
Runs on the server. Files up to 50 MB are processed and deleted in the same request.
How to OCR a scanned PDF
Add a scanned PDF
Drop in the file, up to 50 MB. The pages OCR helps are the ones that are images with no text layer.
Choose a language
Pick the language of the document, so recognition knows what it is reading.
Apply OCR and download
The result is the same document with a searchable text layer added behind the image.
Questions
- What does OCR actually change in the file?
- It adds a hidden text layer aligned with the words in the image. The visible page is unchanged.
- Which languages can I use?
- Fourteen are installed today: Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Urdu. You can combine up to three on one document. The list is read from the server, so more can be added without a change to this page.
- My PDF already has selectable text. Do I need OCR?
- No. If you can already select the text, there is nothing for OCR to add.
- How accurate is it?
- Clean, straight, high-resolution scans read very well. Low-resolution, skewed or handwritten pages are much less reliable.