OCRmyPDF

OCRmyPDF adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDF files, allowing them to be searched

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

Features

• Generate a searchable PDF/A file from a PDF file containing only images
• Place OCRed text accurately below the image to easy copy / paste
• 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 command line tool to OCR PDF files on linux/unix: I found many, but none of them were really satisfying.

• Either they produced PDF files with misplaced text under the image (making copy/paste impossible)
• Or they did not display correctly some escaped html characters located in the hocr file produced by the OCR engine
• Or they changed the resolution of the embedded images
• Or they generated PDF file having a ridiculous 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

Download OCRmyPDF here: https://github.com/fritz-hh/OCRmyPDF/tags

Copy the file in onto your linux/unix machine and extract it.

Run: "sh ./OCRmyPDF.sh -h" to get the script usage

If not yet installed, the script will notify you about dependencies that need to be installed