OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the process of converting a bitmap image of text (like a scanned document) into text that can be selected, copied, and searched by Kofax Power PDF for Mac and other text editing software. Once the text has been recognized by OCR, it is placed on an invisible layer above the image of the text that you can see. When you copy text, the text is copied from this invisible OCR layer. OCR technology will not produce a perfect rendering of the bitmapped text. You will need to proofread and edit the text that results from OCR.
Pick which languages are recognized by OCR in Preferences > OCR. (User Preferences).
While Kofax Power PDF for Mac is performing the OCR, a progress bar will appear. The operation can take a few seconds or much longer, depending on the size and contents of the scanned document.
To perform OCR manually, choose Edit > OCR Page. Kofax Power PDF for Mac commences to perform the OCR operation and the progress bar appears.
Kofax Power PDF for Mac looks at the document and if it sees one image the size of a page, it assumes that the document is a scan and automatically offers to perform OCR. In some cases, Kofax Power PDF for Mac may not recognize a scanned document. Under the Edit menu, OCR Page will be grayed out and unavailable to select.
(Advanced feature of Kofax Power PDF for Mac). See Batch OCR.
Medical and legal dictionaries are included in Kofax Power PDF for Mac’s OCR engine to improve the quality of OCR output for scanned documents by recognizing words specific to the medical and legal professions. This feature is built-in, so there is no need to turn on or adjust any setting. If you choose to edit OCR text, misspelled words for the selected text may be displayed with a red squiggly underline.