PDF scanning takes an all-digital file or image and scans it so the text converts into a format that can be edited or modified. It is typically referred to as optical character recognition (OCR) and is a common feature of many document management solutions. The feature is vital to create more accessible files and documents, while also, vitally, making texts editable since it is impossible to manipulate or change the text of any read-only file. This feature is something people often overlook about PDFs, and this article will explain how OCR works to make PDFs more accessible.
What Does OCR Do With a Document?
OCR scans text images and converts them into actual text so users can change, edit or manipulate them. But it is more than just a simple scan and convert. You can convert any image into a PDF file and try to edit it that way but not all converters change certain files or something about the file is lost in the conversion.
OCR is more of a fine-tooth comb that looks over all the elements on a page and turns them into something that users can convert or edit. The document analysis feature of every OCR program looks at the individual characters of every word to distinguish it from other non-text elements like a graph, table, or chart.
When it completes its analysis, the OCR program arranges the document into a more easily interpreted text. It labels all the separate text spaces on the page and organizes the document into a text that is more user-friendly, readable, searchable, and editable.
PDF Paragraph-Level Editing
OCR is a necessary merge pdf tool to help edit PDFs since the format was created to be something that could not be changed or edited. PDFs were intended to be the same no matter where they were opened or on what device. The need eventually grew to have some way to edit PDFs since they became more and more widespread.
OCR helps in this process by scanning the document and filtering out the actual images from images of text, the latter of which is what users often need to edit. But OCR also helps make large text more user-friendly, since it scans every part of the file users can simply perform a keyword search instead of manually reading through all the different pages.
Digitally-Born PDFs
A digitally-born PDF is a document that originated as digital and is different from documents that are analog and scanned. The scan creates a digital copy, but there are also ways to create new files that are wholly digital aka digitally born. A digitally-born PDF is not necessarily easier to work with but OCR technology lets users smooth out flaws and differences that may exist when scanning an analog document.
OCR can reformat and make corrections to text to make it more presentable and ensure that there are no obvious differences between the texts or degradation of the image quality. Analog documents converted into a digital format may overlook important elements in the text that give it structure. But OCR technology captures those elements (page breaks, footers, headers, footnotes) and integrates them into the new version.
How to Use OCR Technology
OCR technology is built into the programs and document management systems that individuals, groups, and businesses use to organize, record, distribute and save important files or documents. For example, a document management solution like Lumin PDF uses OCR to scan and convert digital-born or analog documents to make them searchable.
Anyone can upload a scanned document to the Lumin server and then scan it once more with OCR. The upload process is what begins the OCR converter so the document is automatically scanned as it opens. The process only takes a few seconds and afterward, you should be able to search and read the document.