Searchable PDF Maker — Add an OCR Text Layer to Scans and Photos

A regular image PDF is a flat picture wrapped in a .pdf container — you cannot select, copy or search the text in it. A searchable PDF has an invisible OCR text layer aligned behind every visible character, so Ctrl+F finds words, Copy works, and screen readers can read the page aloud while the visual appearance stays identical.

The OCR engine reads every word and stores its text and bounding box behind the original image at the exact pixel coordinates. Visually the page looks identical to the original scan, but Adobe Acrobat, Preview, Chrome and every modern PDF viewer can now select, search and copy the text as if it were native digital text.

Yes. The text layer is standard PDF (no proprietary extension), so Adobe Acrobat (Reader and Pro), macOS Preview, Chrome's built-in PDF viewer, Firefox, Edge, and mobile readers like Files app, Drive and Dropbox all index and search it. Ctrl+F or Cmd+F finds words, even in long scanned reports.

Yes. Pass multiple language codes (for example eng+chi_sim+hin) and the OCR considers all of them when reading characters. Mixed-script documents like bilingual menus, international contracts and government forms work cleanly. For best results give the most-likely language first in the list.

The text layer typically adds 5–15% to the PDF size — usually a few hundred kilobytes per 100 pages. Compared to the gain (full-text search across your entire document archive), it is a small price. If size matters for email, run the result through PDF Compress to trim large embedded images further.

Uploads are processed in a temporary working folder and removed under our Security policy. If you explicitly create a share link, anyone with that link can access the result for up to 30 days. Review the Security policy and your organisation's requirements before processing sensitive documents.

This tool reads image files (JPG, PNG, TIFF, scans and photos) and returns a searchable PDF. If you already have a multi-page scanned PDF, first split it into page images with the PDF to Images tool, then drop those images here to get one searchable, OCR'd PDF back.

Upload JPG, PNG, WEBP, GIF, TIFF or BMP — phone photos, flatbed scans and screenshots all work. The OCR engine reads the text and wraps it in an invisible layer behind the picture, so the result is a normal searchable PDF that opens in any viewer.

A searchable PDF needs an invisible text layer positioned word-by-word over the scan, and only Engine 1 and Engine 2 can produce that layer — the 'Default' engine used elsewhere in the app can't. Engine 1 has the widest language support; Engine 2 can do better on stylised or lower-quality scans.

Open the Language picker in Settings and choose the document's language (English by default) — this is the single most important setting for OCR accuracy, since the engine's character recognition is language-specific. Click Re-run conversion after changing it to rebuild the PDF with a fresh text layer.

Pick Engine 1 for its broader language coverage, and set the Language picker to the contract's primary language. If key sections in a second language still aren't matching when you search, re-run the conversion with Engine 2 or the secondary language selected on a second pass.

It updates automatically — switching the Engine or Language dropdown immediately reprocesses the uploaded image and rebuilds the searchable PDF with the new setting, with no click required. The Re-run conversion button is mainly useful for retrying the exact same settings again, for example after a failed conversion or a brief network drop.

If Ctrl+F finds nothing, the PDF is almost certainly a scan — the pages are pictures with no text underneath. Run the file through this searchable PDF converter: OCR reads every page and adds an invisible text layer, so search, highlighting and copy-paste start working in any viewer. The visible pages stay pixel-for-pixel the same.

You don't need Acrobat or installed software. Upload the scan, preview the searchable result and download the standard PDF without creating an account, within the free allowance. The output opens in any PDF viewer.

Almost always one of three things. The file is over the 11 MB free upload limit — Premium takes 50 MB and Pro 120 MB. The format is not one this tool accepts, so check the list shown on the upload panel. Or the file is not really the format its name says: renaming a file does not change what is inside it, and that is the reason a valid-looking PDF gets refused.

A PDF stores where every character sits on the page, not the paragraphs and styles a word processor works in, so converting means rebuilding that structure by inference. Complex columns, tables and text wrapped around images are where it drifts. If the appearance matters more than editability, choose the visual mode; if you need to type into it, choose the editable mode and expect to fix the odd heading.

No. You can run Searchable PDF and download the free result without an account, and it carries no watermark. Premium is what you buy when the limits start to bite: larger uploads, no daily cap, and the original-resolution result. Nothing is revealed at the download step that was not visible before you started.

No — Searchable PDF runs in the browser on desktop and phone. There is nothing to install, no trial to start, and no license to buy before you can see whether it does what you need. Try it on the file you are actually stuck with rather than a sample.