Convert scanned PDFs into searchable, selectable text documents. Copy text, search content, and make documents accessible.
A scanned PDF is a photograph of a document. You can read it with your eyes, but your computer can't — it can't search the text, you can't copy a paragraph, and screen readers can't access the content.
OCR changes that. It analyzes the page images and creates a text layer that makes the document fully functional: searchable with Ctrl+F, selectable for copy-paste, accessible to screen readers, and indexable by search engines.
Convert scanned PDFs into searchable and editable documents.
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Maximum file size: 20MB (OCR limit)
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that converts images of text into machine-readable text. When applied to a scanned PDF, it analyzes each page image, identifies character shapes, and creates a text layer that overlays the original image. The result is a searchable PDF — visually identical to the original scan, but with an invisible text layer that makes all the content accessible to software, search functions, and accessibility tools.
Use cases include:
Making archived scanned contracts searchable so specific clauses can be found quickly.
Processing scanned invoices and receipts so amounts and dates can be searched and extracted.
Converting scanned academic papers into searchable documents for research.
Making historical scanned records accessible for digital archiving.
Processing scanned forms so data can be extracted without manual re-entry.
Scanned documents become fully functional — searchable, selectable, accessible, and indexable.
Upload, process, download a fully searchable document.
Upload your scanned PDF. The tool works best with clean, well-lit scans at 200 DPI or higher.
Select the language of the document text (for best accuracy).
Download the OCR-processed PDF. Open it and press Ctrl+F to confirm text is now searchable.
Upload, select language, download. Press Ctrl+F to confirm the text is searchable.
Each page of the scanned PDF is extracted as an image and preprocessed — deskewing, denoising, and contrast adjustment improve recognition accuracy.
The preprocessed image is analyzed by the OCR engine: character segmentation identifies individual characters, and the recognition engine matches them to character models using the selected language model.
Recognized text is placed as an invisible layer over the original page image, aligned with the visual text positions. The output PDF contains both the original scan and the searchable text layer.
OCR is a multi-stage process: image preprocessing, character segmentation, recognition, and text layer creation.
Image preprocessing: the scanned page is analyzed for skew (rotation), noise, and contrast. Preprocessing corrects these issues to improve recognition accuracy.
Character segmentation: the preprocessed image is analyzed to identify individual characters, words, and lines. Layout analysis determines reading order for multi-column documents.
Recognition: each character segment is matched against character models using pattern recognition and language models. The language model helps resolve ambiguous characters using context.
Text layer creation: recognized text is placed as an invisible layer over the original page image, positioned to align with the visual text. The result is a PDF with both the original image and the text layer.
Searchable documents are fundamentally more useful than image-only scans.
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A scanned document that can't be searched is just a picture. OCR makes it a document.
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Find answers to common questions about our PDF tools
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts images of text into actual searchable, selectable text. Scanned PDFs are essentially photographs — you can see the text but can't select, copy, or search it. OCR analyzes those images and creates a text layer, making the document fully functional as a text document.
The OCR engine supports most major languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and many others. The accuracy is highest for documents with clear, standard fonts.
For clean, well-scanned documents with standard fonts, accuracy is typically 95–99%. Accuracy decreases with poor scan quality, unusual fonts, handwriting, or documents with complex layouts like tables or multi-column text.
No. OCR adds an invisible text layer behind the existing page image. The document looks identical — the same scan, the same layout — but now has searchable, selectable text underneath.
Standard OCR has limited accuracy on handwriting. It works best on printed text. For handwritten documents, accuracy varies significantly depending on the clarity and consistency of the handwriting.
A regular scanned PDF is just images — you can view it but can't search or copy text. A searchable PDF (after OCR) has an invisible text layer that allows Ctrl+F search, text selection, copy-paste, and accessibility features like screen readers.
Yes. If a PDF has mixed content — some pages are digital text, others are scanned — OCR can be applied to the scanned pages while leaving the digital text pages unchanged.
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