OCR PDF

The PDF OCR tool converts scanned documents and image-based PDFs into searchable text using Optical Character Recognition technology. Scanned documents and PDFs created from images contain pictures of text, not actual text characters. You cannot search, select, or copy from these documents. Using the Tesseract.js OCR engine, this tool analyzes each page, recognizes characters through machine learning, extracts the text, and creates a searchable PDF where text can be selected and searched. This is essential for digitizing paper archives, making scanned contracts searchable, extracting text from photos of documents, and converting legacy documents into usable format. All OCR processing happens in your browser for complete privacy.

Image-based PDFs are frustrating when you need to find or extract information. Use cases include digitizing paper archives for searchability, making scanned contracts and agreements text-searchable, extracting data from scanned invoices and receipts, converting old documents into editable format, making photographed whiteboards and notes searchable, enabling search in document management systems, and creating accessible documents from image-only PDFs. The tool is invaluable for archivists, legal professionals, accountants, and anyone managing large collections of scanned documents. Searchable PDFs transform unusable scans into valuable searchable archives.

To perform OCR on PDFs, upload your scanned or image-based PDF by clicking the upload area or dragging it in. Select the document language for better accuracy. Click Start OCR to begin text recognition processing. Wait for analysis, which can take time depending on document length and image quality. Download the searchable PDF where all text is now selectable and searchable while maintaining the original appearance.