I need to be able to copy and paste notes from a PDF that I guess was
scanned in so that all text is like images (I can't select anything).
I can't believe I haven't found any solutions on my own! Even OCR
software appears to not advertise the option of going from image PDF
to text PDF. I must be missing some big here. There is no security
option protecting the PDF from copy and pasting. I'm using Adobe
Reader 8.0, which I would assume has some sort of option like this
since it is itself a program that can take scanned hard copies and
turn them into digital text.

Thanks,
smgprh

smgraph123@gmail.com wrote:
> ...
> I'm using Adobe Reader 8.0, which I would assume has some sort of option like this
> since it is itself a program that can take scanned hard copies and
> turn them into digital text.
> 
> Thanks,
> smgprh

Adobe Acrobat does have this option, not Adobe Reader.

smgraph123@gmail.com wrote:

>Even OCR
>software appears to not advertise the option of going from image PDF
>to text PDF. 

It isn't out of the question, Acrobat has a built in OCR.


>I using Adobe
>Reader 8.0, which I would assume has some sort of option like this

I fear you are assuming a lot for free software. No, there is no OCR
there, Adobe sell Acrobat for this purpose.

>since it is itself a program that can take scanned hard copies and
>turn them into digital text.

No, Adobe Reader cannot do this. If you can do this, you would seem to
have Acrobat, not Adobe Reader. Or you are using a scanner with a
"send to Adobe Reader" option. This has caused considerable confusion.
It doesn't mean "send this scan to Adobe Reader to convert to PDF", it
means "convert this to PDF [with your own software] then send the PDF
to Adobe Reader to view".

----------------------------------------
Aandi Inston  
Please support usenet! Post replies and follow-ups, don't e-mail them.

smgraph123@gmail.com wrote:
> I need to be able to copy and paste notes from a PDF that I guess was
> scanned in so that all text is like images (I can't select anything).
> I can't believe I haven't found any solutions on my own! Even OCR
> software appears to not advertise the option of going from image PDF
> to text PDF. I must be missing some big here. 

Yes. Others have posted about the difference between Reader (free) and
Acrobat (costs).

The other problem is that unless the originator did the scanning with
great care deliberately for OCR, the chances are that the quality simply
isn't good enough to be reliable. Even with the best skew algorithms and
outline-completion algorithms, there are serious OCR problems with
broken letters, wavy lines, and other artifacts and dependencies on the
printing or reproduction method of the original (paper) document.

> There is no security
> option protecting the PDF from copy and pasting. I'm using Adobe
> Reader 8.0, which I would assume has some sort of option like this
> since it is itself a program that can take scanned hard copies and
> turn them into digital text.

No.

///Peter

On May 18, 7:14 am, Peter Flynn <peter.n...@m.silmaril.ie> wrote:
> smgraph...@gmail.com wrote:
> > I need to be able to copy and paste notes from a PDF that I guess was
> > scanned in so that all text is like images (I can't select anything).
> > I can't believe I haven't found any solutions on my own! Even OCR
> > software appears to not advertise the option of going from image PDF
> > to text PDF. I must be missing some big here.
>
> Yes. Others have posted about the difference between Reader (free) and
> Acrobat (costs).
>
> The other problem is that unless the originator did the scanning with
> great care deliberately for OCR, the chances are that the quality simply
> isn't good enough to be reliable. Even with the best skew algorithms and
> outline-completion algorithms, there are serious OCR problems with
> broken letters, wavy lines, and other artifacts and dependencies on the
> printing or reproduction method of the original (paper) document.
>
> > There is no security
> > option protecting the PDF from copy and pasting. I'm using Adobe
> > Reader 8.0, which I would assume has some sort of option like this
> > since it is itself a program that can take scanned hard copies and
> > turn them into digital text.
>
> No.
>
> ///Peter

Thanks for the responses. I guess I'm old enough and professional
enough now to make the big step to Acrobat.

Thanks,
smgprh

smgraph123@gmail.com wrote:
[...]
> Thanks for the responses. I guess I'm old enough and professional
> enough now to make the big step to Acrobat.

Or just dump out the images with pdfimage and use a standalone OCR program.

///Peter