Turn scanned documents into searchable text.
Scanned PDFs are just images. You can see the text, but your computer can't — which means no searching, no copying, no selecting. A 100-page scanned contract is as opaque to your search function as a photograph.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) solves this by reading the scanned images and adding an invisible text layer. The PDF looks the same, but now Ctrl+F works. You can select and copy text. Accessibility tools can read it.
Drop your scanned PDF into the OCR tool. It handles single-page scans and multi-hundred-page documents alike.
The OCR engine analyzes each page, recognizes characters in 25+ languages, and creates an invisible text layer that sits behind the scanned image.
Save the result. It looks identical to the original scan, but now you can search, select, and copy all the text.
Use Ctrl+F to search through hundreds of scanned pages. Find names, dates, clause numbers, or any text without reading page by page.
Select and copy text from scanned documents. Quote specific passages in emails, reports, or other documents without retyping.
Screen readers can process the text layer, making scanned documents accessible to visually impaired users. Important for compliance with accessibility standards.
Document management systems can index and catalog searchable PDFs. Turn a file cabinet of scans into a searchable archive.
Scanned documents are often the most sensitive files in an organization. They include signed contracts, notarized documents, court filings, medical records, and identity documents — items that were originally paper precisely because of their sensitivity.
Uploading these to a cloud OCR service creates a digital, searchable copy on a third-party server. That's a significant expansion of your document's attack surface. Even if the service deletes the file after processing, it existed on their infrastructure during OCR — and the extracted text may persist in logs or caches.
ModernPDF's OCR runs in your browser. The scanned images are processed locally, the text layer is generated on your device, and the searchable PDF is assembled without any data leaving your computer. For sensitive scanned documents, this is the only approach that makes sense.
ModernPDF's OCR recognizes text in 25+ languages including English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Hindi. It can handle multiple languages within the same document.
The AI engine handles most scan quality issues — slight skew, uneven lighting, and moderate blur. Very low resolution scans (under 150 DPI) or heavily damaged documents may produce less accurate results. For best results, scan at 300 DPI or higher.
No. The scanned page images stay exactly the same. OCR adds an invisible text layer behind the images. Visually, the document is identical — but now it's searchable and the text is selectable.
OCR is a Pro feature. You can try it with a Pro subscription at $9/month or $49/year, which also unlocks AI translation and unlimited use of all other tools.
Yes. The OCR tool processes the scanned image portions. Pages that already have text layers are typically left unchanged. This works well for mixed documents where some pages are native PDF and others are scanned.
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