OCRmyPDF

Script aimed at performing optical character recognition (OCR) on PDF files from PDF files containing only images

To get the script usage, call: ./OCmyPDF.sh -h

Features

• Generate a searchable PDF/A file from a PDF file containing only images
• Keep the exact resolution of the original embedded images
• If requested deskew and / or clean the image before performing OCR
• Validate the generated file against the PDF/A specification using jhove
• Provides debug mode to enable easy verification of the OCR results

Motivation

I searched the web for a free tool to OCR PDF files on linux/unix: I found many, but none of them was satisfying.

• Either they produced PDF files with misplaced text below the image (making copy/paste impossible)
• Or they changed the resolution of the embedded images
• Or they generated PDF file having a rediculous big size
• Or they crashed when trying to OCR some of my PDF files
• Or they did not produce valid PDF files (even though they were readable with my current PDF reader) On top of that none of them produced PDF/A files (format dedicated for long time storage / archiving)

... so I decided to develop my own tool (using various existing scripts as an inspiration)

Install

TODO

Install jhove: download jhove from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jhove/files/jhove/ After extracting the JHOVE files to some directory "jhove", you have to edit the file "jhove/conf/jhove.conf" and change something in "something" to the actual directory (ending in "/jhove").