Turn scanned PDFs into searchable PDFs. Works with any PDF that contains images or scanned pages.

• Python 3.6+
• Tesseract OCR:
  • Windows: Download from https://github.com/UB-Mannheim/tesseract/wiki
  • macOS: brew install tesseract
  • Linux: sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr

pip install -r requirements.txt

Basic:

python ocr_pdf.py your_file.pdf

Creates your_file_searchable.pdf

With GUI:

python ocr_gui.py

Multiple files:

python ocr_pdf.py file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf

Different language (German example):

python ocr_pdf.py document.pdf -l deu

Custom output location:

python ocr_pdf.py scan.pdf -o /path/to/output.pdf

Common language codes:

• eng - English
• deu - German
• fra - French
• spa - Spanish
• ita - Italian
• por - Portuguese
• chi_sim - Chinese
• jpn - Japanese
• kor - Korean

For multiple languages use + like: eng+deu+fra

The tool automatically optimizes output size.

To disable optimization: python ocr_pdf.py file.pdf --no-optimize