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The views expressed in this blog are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Adobe Systems Incorporated.
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April 15, 2008
Creating a Non-Searchable PDF from Office Documents
Every once in a while, I receive an email that has me scratching my head a bit, such as this one:
When you PDF a document that you generate in MS Word, is there a way to produce an "image-only" PDF, with non-searchable text? The only way I know how is to print out and scan the document back into Acrobat.
Why would someone want to take a perfectly good, fully-searchable document and turn it into an image-only PDF which is just a picture of the page in a PDF wrapper?
The answer is that in the course of vigorously defending a client, some firms desire to make using documents as difficult as possible for the other side.
Of the various PDF flavors , an image-only PDF is . . .
- 3 to 5 times larger in file size
- Look worse on screen
- Print slower
- Not searchable
"Dumbing down" a PDF to an image probably doesn't cripple the other side very much. Using OCR, the other side can quickly make the document searchable.
It is not without some trepidition that I share this tip. After all, compact, searchable PDF should be what we all aspire to create.
However, since I suspect that many firms are printing out documents and rescanning them, I want to offer a greener alternative.
It's not for me to comment on whether this is fair game or not as you work with the other side, but following is a workaround that will create an image-only, non-searchable PDF from an existing PDF document.
December 10, 2007
Cleaning up Scanned Images
I recently received this message from a legal technology consultant:
I have had several clients (and have wondered myself) why there’s no way to delete something from a PDF. For example, if I scan a document and want to delete the black marks made by the staple holes in the top left corner, I can’t do that without cropping the entire image. What is the reasoning for not including a feature that would allow me to draw a box around those staple holes and delete them from the image?
Actually, Adobe did include a feature to clean up scanned images!
You can easily clean up scanned images using the Redaction tool:
Normally, redactions appear as a black box which obscures the underlying document. Did you know that Acrobat can redact to "No Color" as well?
In this article, I'll offer step-by-step instructions for cleaning up scanned PDFs using the Redaction tool in Acrobat 8 Professional.
Using this workflow, you can easily delete staple marks, hole punches, shadows, dirt and more from PDFs.
September 06, 2007
Using Acrobat with the Fujitsu fi-5110C Scanner
Fujitsu has an excellent reputation in the document scanning business. Many solo and small firms use their popular and inexpensive ScanSnap S510 document scanner—about $400 or so street price—for document scanning.
While I've scanned thousands of pages using my ScanSnap, it was a workflow challenge because the modely I have could not be directly controlled by Acrobat.
The ScanSnap S510 doesn'tt support TWAIN, a standard software protocol that allows scanning devices and software programs to communicate.
Thus, I was delighted recently when Fujitsu was nice enough to send me an evaluation unit of the ScanSnap fi-5110C, the next model up in the line. You can find this model for about $600 to $700 at various online stores.
The ScanSnap fi-5110c is a good choice for solo or small firms that want more control over scanning to PDF. It includes a good TWAIN driver and the full version of Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard. Fujitsu tells me that they will be upgrading to Acrobat 8 shortly. This device is compatible with both XP and Vista.
The ScanSnap fi-5110C is rated to scan fifteen double-sided pages per minute.
Read on to learn more about my experience using this scanner and some tips and techniques for setting it up.
July 28, 2007
Rick's Scanning Article on LLRX.com
LLRX.com is a great destination for legal professionals.
This independent, web journal for legal, library, and marketing professionals is— amazingly— a one-woman operation!
Sabrina Pacifici is the brains behind this site which receives more than 130,000 unique readers each month.
When Sabrina asked me to contribute an article that would appeal to a large number of legal pros, I immediately thought about scanning and OCR.
Almost everyone has to find a way to get paper documents into their computer.
Read on for a link to the article and a brief summary.
June 13, 2007
Acrobat 8.1 Update: Fix for Renderable Text Issue
Normally, a dot release to one of Adobe’s major product offerings isn’t that exciting.
Besides offering support for Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007, the latest dot release to Acrobat 8 (v8.1) offers an OCR enhancement that will be very welcome indeed!
Acrobat 8.1 offers a fix to a most vexing OCR problem— the dreaded renderable text error:
Renderable Text is vector (computer generated) text that is placed on top of an image layer.
You may encounter this error if when you try to OCR an image-only PDF containing a Bates stamp. In some federal court districts, stamped image-only PDFs are commonly distributed.
The Acrobat 8.1 Update offers a fix that works for just about every file that has Bates stamps.
For a complete list of fixes in the 8.1 Update, check out this Adobe Knowledge Base Article. (Opens in a new window)
Read on to learn how to get the Acrobat 8.1 Update and some limitations of the fix.
June 12, 2007
Troubleshooting Acrobat OCR
Searchable PDFs are critical in litigation and matter management. Using Acrobat's OCR function, you can turn mountains of paper into searachable PDFs that look just like the original.
Occasionally, you may run into some issues.
Read on to learn about some workarounds and key considerations.
February 19, 2007
Is that PDF Searchable?
Most law firms and even solos have a scanner that can create PDF from paper documents. Overwhelmingly, these devices create image-only, non-searchable PDFs.
Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), Acrobat can add an invisible layer of searchable text while maintaining the original appearance.
The resulting searchable file is referred to as an image+text PDF.
An image+text PDF looks no different than a PDF which is not searchable. That creates a problem.
How can you tell if a PDF is searchable or not?
November 09, 2006
Using Acrobat with the Canon DR-2580C Scanner
One of the perks of my job at Adobe is that partners send me cool stuff to evaluate. Sometimes the products come without any warning. That was the case when I received a Canon DR-2580C scanner recently. I don't even know who to thank!
The DR-2580C is a great scanner for a solo or small firm. The DR-2580C is rated at 25, black and white, double-sided pages per minute at 300 dpi. That's smoking fast! Best of all, this scanner includes a full version of Adobe Acrobat 7 Standard. I assume they will upgrade the bundle to Acrobat 8 in the future.
For a scanner this fast, the price is reasonable ranging from about $640 to $750 depending on the online retailer.
I've discovered a few tips for using this scanner with Acrobat 8. While we're at it, I'll make note of some new OCR features in Acrobat 8.
Read on more info…
October 27, 2005
Batch OCR using Acrobat Professional
Have you ever received a PDF file that did not contain searchable text? You may know that you can use Acrobat’s OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to add an invisible layer of searchable text on top of the file. This allows you to select, copy and search text on a paper document. Great!
What do you do when you have hundreds of TIFFs and Image-only PDFs file that you need to search for a big case? Working with these documents one at a time is not efficient.
If you have Acrobat Professional, you can batch OCR and let you computer do the work for you.
Read on to learn how…