PDFScanner - Scanning and OCR 4+
Felix Rotthowe
-
- $29.99
Screenshots
Description
PDFScanner is fully compatible to macOS Sonoma!
There are many applications for macOS that allow scanning of images or text. Most of them are however complex, slow or not really suited for scanning documents or letters.
PDFScanner has been created with one simple task in mind: Scanning and archiving documents as quick and easy as possible, and making them findable with Spotlight search.
When performing OCR, PDFScanner adds the recognized text directly to the scanned image as an invisible layer, so the text can be selected and copied just like in other PDF files.
PDFScanner supports the following features:
• Support for all scanners that are supported by the macOS Image Capture application (please check that using the scanner in Image Capture works before purchasing to be sure)
• Direct scanning with the iPhone or iPad camera. Perspective correction is done on device and with adequate lighting the quality comes close to using a real scanner. This feature requires your Mac and iOS device to be logged in with the same iCloud account and the "Handoff" feature to be activated on both devices.
• Optical character recognition to make the document searchable, allow to find it via Spotlight and other search tools or copy the text.
• Supported OCR languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish and Finnish
• Intuitive and fast user interface to reorder, delete or edit pages
• Fully automatic straightening of crooked pages (deskew)
• Full multithreading support. Scanning, OCR and straightening is done on multiple pages in parallel and you can even reorder or delete pages while PDFScanner is still working
• „Fake Duplex“ mode to simplify scanning of double sided documents without a duplex scanner
• Saving to PDF (optionally compressing the scan inside the PDF to save disk space). PDFScanner can perform super high compression for monochrome scans (usually smaller than 50kb per page including OCR text)
• Supports PDF/A for long-term archiving (requires macOS Big Sur or later)
• Customizable file name patterns (include for example date, time and machine name in the filename) - PDFScanner can even guess the document title and date from the OCR text.
• It is also possible to open or import existing PDF documents and perform OCR on them via a menu option (the language can be set in the Preferences).
• Advanced users can use the included Automator action to create custom OCR workflows or folder actions
PDFScanner runs on all macOS versions starting with Catalina up to Ventura including native support for M1/M2 Macs. It is only available on the Mac App Store.
What’s New
Version 2023.1
* Scanner Compatibility Fixes
Ratings and Reviews
PDF SCANNER
An excellent and simple to use app. Creates good quality PDF scans with significantly reduced file sizes, compared to other scanning software I have used. Can also drag in files of other types e.g. JPG or PDF and combine them as well into single doc; also at reduced file size with good graphics quality. Dragging an existing large PDF file or other type will allow it to be resaved in similar graphics and reduced file size. I have used the OCR once and it did a reasonable job. Escrew also works fine, but slows scan down obviously. Duplex function works well. You can also do multiple passes with scanner and have each file added as it goes, if not using a feeder. You can also scan separate docs files in one pass and save each separately by selecting relevant pages first after scanning.
Better than Acrobat Pro, Preview and Canon Scan combined!
Pros:
Can control your scanner directly (works with my Canon LIDE210-generally better than the packaged software!).
OCR and deskewing can be carried out on individual pages or on every page.
Deskewing better than that available in Acrobat Pro XI.
Lets you scan while OCR and deskewing are being carried out on earlier pages.
Lets you pick which pages to save into a pdf file.
Preferences let you automagically rotate every page while scanning.
Cons:
Only opens one file at a time-so if you want to drag and drop pages from one pdf to another you'll have to use Preview (or Acrobat Pro if you have that).
No option for increasing contrast.
No option for reducing transparency (where the back of the page scans through because the paper's thin or the scan light is too intense).
Crop function still only applicable for all pages (rather than the even and odd page option that Acrobat Pro gives you). This is good if your margins/ gutters are all along one side of the page, bad if they alternate.
Does job well but would like UI improvements
I have been using PDFScanner for scanning a lot of old paperwork. As a scanner it works well and I particularly like the "Fake Duplex" so you can single-side scan multiple pages and then re-join them like they were double-side scanned.
However I would like to see UI improvements to make the transition between different modes such as 'Flatbed' to 'Document feeder' easier. Move items such as these out from "Settings" to being buttons. Put often-used buttons closer together to avoid lots of mousing back and forth.
It would be 5 stars from me if it had these improvements.
App Privacy
The developer, Felix Rotthowe, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer's privacy policy.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Felix Rotthowe
- Size
- 68.4 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
-
- Mac
- Requires macOS 10.15 or later.
- Languages
-
English, German
- Age Rating
- 4+
- Copyright
- ©2023 Felix Rotthowe
- Price
- $29.99
Supports
-
Family Sharing
Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.