How to OCR a PDF and Make Scans Searchable
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) reads the text inside a scanned or image-based PDF and adds a hidden, selectable text layer on top of the page image. The result is a document you can search, select and copy — while still looking exactly like the original scan. SwiftPDFLab runs OCR entirely in your browser, so sensitive scans are never uploaded to a server.
What OCR Does — and Does Not — Do
OCR makes a scanned page searchable and selectable by recognising the words in the image. It does not convert the scan into fully reflowable, editable paragraph text with live fonts and layout. The visible page remains the original image; the recognised words sit in an invisible layer beneath your cursor. For true in-place editing of existing text you would need a document that already contains real text, not a scan.
Step 1: Open the OCR Tool
Go to the OCR PDF tool and upload your scanned PDF, or open the scan in the SwiftPDFLab Editor and run OCR from there.
Step 2: Choose the Document Language
Select the language of the document so the recognition engine can apply the right character set. SwiftPDFLab supports multiple languages for OCR; picking the correct one markedly improves accuracy on accented or non-Latin scripts.
Step 3: Run Recognition
Start OCR and wait for processing. Because everything runs locally, larger scans take a little longer, but no data leaves your device at any point.
Step 4: Search, Select and Download
Once complete, use Ctrl/Cmd + F to search the document, select recognised words, or copy text out. Download the searchable PDF when you are happy with the result.
Pro Tip
OCR accuracy depends on scan quality. Straight, well-lit scans at 300 DPI or higher with good contrast recognise far more reliably than skewed, low-resolution or faded pages. Re-scan problem pages rather than trying to fix a poor source image.
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