OCR PDF
Extract text from scanned PDF
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Select PDF files from your device
Scanned documents, photographed pages, and image-based PDFs represent a significant portion of the documents people work with every day. Old contracts that were filed as paper, research papers that exist only as scanned archives, meeting notes photographed with a phone, or government forms that were never digitally typed — all of these contain valuable information locked inside images that cannot be selected, copied, searched, or edited by normal means. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the technology that reads image-based text and converts it into actual machine-readable characters. LazyPDF's OCR tool uses Tesseract.js, an open-source implementation of Google's Tesseract OCR engine that runs entirely in your browser without sending your files to any server. This is unusual and valuable: most online OCR services require you to upload your documents to their servers, where the content is processed and potentially retained. With LazyPDF, your scanned contracts, tax forms, medical records, and personal letters are analyzed entirely on your device, preserving your privacy completely. The tool supports dozens of languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and many others — selecting the correct language for your document significantly improves accuracy. Once processing completes, you can copy the extracted text to your clipboard or download it as a plain text file to use in Word, Google Docs, or any other application where you need the content to be editable and searchable.
How It Works
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts scanned pages or image-based PDFs into selectable, searchable text. The tool renders each page as an image and feeds it to Tesseract.js, an open-source OCR engine that runs entirely in your browser. Your document never leaves your device.
Key Features
Multi-Language
Supports recognition in dozens of languages including English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and many more.
Browser-Based OCR
Tesseract.js runs locally in your browser. Your scanned documents are never uploaded to any server, protecting sensitive content.
Copy & Download
Copy the extracted text to your clipboard or download it as a plain text file for use in other applications.
Page-by-Page Progress
See real-time progress as each page is processed, so you know exactly how long the extraction will take.
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate is the OCR text recognition?
Accuracy depends heavily on the quality of the scan. Clean, high-resolution scans of printed text typically achieve 95-99% accuracy. Handwritten text, low-resolution scans, or unusual fonts will produce lower accuracy. Selecting the correct document language improves results significantly.
Can OCR recognize handwritten text?
Tesseract.js is primarily designed for printed text recognition. It may partially recognize neat, consistent handwriting, but results will be unreliable for most handwritten content. For best results, use this tool with clearly printed or typed documents.
Why does OCR processing take a while?
OCR involves rendering each page as an image and then analyzing every character using machine learning models. This is computationally intensive, especially since it runs entirely in your browser rather than on a powerful server. Larger documents with many pages will naturally take longer.
Does OCR make the PDF searchable?
This tool extracts the text and gives it to you as plain text that you can copy or download. It does not create a searchable PDF overlay. The extracted text can be used in documents, search systems, or any other application where you need the textual content from your scanned pages.
What scan resolution gives the best OCR results?
A scan resolution of at least 300 DPI produces good OCR results for typical printed text. Below 200 DPI, character recognition accuracy drops noticeably, especially for smaller font sizes. If you are scanning documents specifically for OCR, set your scanner to 300–400 DPI for the best balance of quality and file size.
Can I perform OCR on a multi-page scanned PDF?
Yes. The tool processes every page sequentially and extracts text from all of them. The extracted text from all pages is combined into a single output, with clear page boundaries indicated. For very long documents, processing may take several minutes depending on your device speed.
Does the tool work for PDFs in non-Latin scripts like Arabic or Japanese?
Yes. Tesseract.js includes trained models for many non-Latin scripts including Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, Hindi, and others. Select the appropriate language from the dropdown before starting the recognition for best results.
Can I use OCR output in Microsoft Word or Google Docs?
Absolutely. Once the text is extracted, you can copy it from the results display and paste it directly into any word processor. Alternatively, download it as a .txt file and import or open it in your editor of choice. Some light cleanup of formatting may be needed for complex layouts.