The QA lead left a printed test plan with good examples but no digital copy; I need selectable text tonight to update …
Open the scanned PDF file in Adobe Acrobat.
Go to the Tools menu.
Select Scan & OCR from the tools list.
Click Recognize Text and choose In This File.
In the settings panel, ensure PDF Output Style is set to Searchable Image.
Click Recognize to start the OCR process.
Save the PDF after OCR is complete.
Best practiceFor best OCR accuracy, scan your documents at 300 dpi and ensure the images are clear before running OCR.
After OCR completes, you can search, copy, and highlight text in your previously scanned PDF.
This runs in the Acrobat app - there is no separate API for this task.
Renderable text means that the text on the page is already real, digital text that a computer can read and interact with. When a page has renderable text, it means the text is already selectable and searchable. The text recognition (OCR) feature is designed to convert images of text into actual text, so it cannot be used on pages that already contain this digital text. If Acrobat says 'page contains renderable text', it means you don't need to run OCR because the text is already recognized.
If your scanned document is blurry, the accuracy of text recognition (OCR) will be lower. To improve it, you should rescan the document at a higher quality. Adobe recommends scanning at 300 dpi (dots per inch) for the best OCR results. A clearer scan gives the OCR engine better image data to work with, leading to more accurate text recognition.
Selecting the correct language before recognizing text is very important because OCR software uses language-specific rules and dictionaries to identify characters and words. If you choose the wrong language, the OCR engine might misinterpret characters that look similar across different languages, leading to many errors in the recognized text. For example, 'ñ' in Spanish could be mistaken for 'n' or 'm' if the language is set to English.
Yes, you can automate making scanned PDFs searchable using the Adobe PDF Services API. This is very useful for businesses or large document archives. You would use the 'OCR PDF' operation available through the API. You send your image-only PDF to the API endpoint, and it returns a PDF with a searchable text layer. This automation helps with indexing documents, making them easier to find and manage without manual steps.