OCRmyPDF/docs/cookbook.rst

Cookbook
========

Basic examples
--------------

Help!
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ocrmypdf has built-in help.

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --help


Add an OCR layer and convert to PDF/A
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.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf input.pdf output.pdf

Add an OCR layer and output a standard PDF
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.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --output-type pdf input.pdf output.pdf

Create a PDF/A with all color and grayscale images converted to JPEG
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.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --output-type pdfa --pdfa-image-compression jpeg input.pdf output.pdf

Modify a file in place
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The file will only be overwritten if OCRmyPDF is successful.

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf myfile.pdf myfile.pdf

Correct page rotation
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OCR will attempt to automatic correct the rotation of each page. This can help fix a scanning job that contains a mix of landscape and portrait pages.

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --rotate-pages myfile.pdf myfile.pdf

You can increase (decrease) the parameter ``--rotate-pages-threshold`` to make page rotation more (less) aggressive.


OCR languages other than English
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By default OCRmyPDF assumes the document is English. 

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf -l fre LeParisien.pdf LeParisien.pdf
	ocrmypdf -l eng+fre Bilingual-English-French.pdf Bilingual-English-French.pdf

Language packs must be installed for all languages specified. See :ref:`Installing additional language packs <lang-packs>`.


Produce PDF and text file containing OCR text
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This produces a file named "output.pdf" and a companion text file named "output.txt".

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --sidecar output.txt input.pdf output.pdf

OCR images, not PDFs
--------------------

Use a program like `img2pdf <https://gitlab.mister-muffin.de/josch/img2pdf>`_ to convert your images to PDFs, and then pipe the results to run ocrmypdf:

.. code-block:: bash

	img2pdf my-images*.jpg | ocrmypdf - myfile.pdf

``img2pdf`` also has features to control the position of images on a page, if desired.

For convenience, OCRmyPDF can convert single images to PDFs on its own. If the resolution (dots per inch, DPI) of an image is not set or is incorrect, it can be overridden with ``--image-dpi``. (As 1 inch is 2.54 cm, 1 dpi = 0.39 dpcm).

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --image-dpi 300 image.png myfile.pdf

If you have multiple images, you must use ``img2pdf`` to convert the images to PDF.

.. note::

    ImageMagick ``convert`` can also convert a group of images to PDF, but in the author's experience it takes a long time, transcodes unnecessarily and gives poor results.

You can also use Tesseract 3.04+ directly to convert single page images or multi-page TIFFs to PDF:

.. code-block:: bash

	tesseract my-image.jpg output-prefix pdf 

Image processing
----------------

OCRmyPDF perform some image processing on each page of a PDF, if desired.  The same processing is applied to each page.  It is suggested that the user review files after image processing as these commands might remove desirable content, especially from poor quality scans.

* ``--rotate-pages`` attempts to determine the correct orientation for each page and rotates the page if necessary.

* ``--remove-background`` attempts to detect and remove a noisy background from grayscale or color images.  Monochrome images are ignored. This should not be used on documents that contain color photos as it may remove them.

* ``--deskew`` will correct pages were scanned at a skewed angle by rotating them back into place.  Skew determination and correction is performed using `Postl's variance of line sums <http://www.leptonica.com/skew-measurement.html>`_ algorithm as implemented in `Leptonica <http://www.leptonica.com/index.html>`_.
  
* ``--clean`` uses `unpaper <https://www.flameeyes.eu/projects/unpaper>`_ to clean up pages before OCR, but does not alter the final output.  This makes it less likely that OCR will try to find text in background noise.

* ``--clean-final`` uses unpaper to clean up pages before OCR and inserts the page into the final output.  You will want to review each page to ensure that unpaper did not remove something important.

.. note::

	In many cases image processing will rasterize PDF pages as images, potentially losing quality.

.. warning::

	``--clean-final`` and ``-remove-background`` may leave undesirable visual artifacts in some images where their algorithms have shortcomings. Files should be visually reviewed after using these options.


OCR and correct document skew (crooked scan)
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Deskew:

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --deskew input.pdf output.pdf

Image processing commands can be combined. The order in which options are given does not matter. OCRmyPDF always applies the steps of the image processing pipeline in the same order (rotate, remove background, deskew, clean).

.. code-block:: bash

	ocrmypdf --deskew --clean --rotate-pages input.pdf output.pdf


Improving OCR quality
---------------------

The `Image processing`_ features can improve OCR quality.

Rotating pages and deskewing helps to ensure that the page orientation is correct before OCR begins. Removing the background and/or cleaning the page can also improve results. The ``--oversample DPI`` argument can be specified to resample images to higher resolution before attempting OCR; this can improve results as well.

OCR quality will suffer if the resolution of input images is not correct (since the range of pixel sizes that will be checked for possible fonts will also be incorrect).