by David R. Mankin
PDF files start their lives as many different file types
before their conversion to PDF. Using the print command will allow you to
convert any document to PDF from any application.
There are powerful utilities
that skillfully guide the conversion process to include advanced features, as
is the case with PDF Maker–the
Microsoft Office to PDF utility that come with Acrobat 9.
Acrobat itself will
do conversions to PDF. Take a look at the very first task button: it's called Create. Clicking this button reveals
various sources from which Acrobat will create a PDF file. One of these
options, PDF from Scanner allows you to grab an image of a document and convert it to PDF.
An image-based PDF file can pose a few challenges. A
pixel-based document is generally a large file. Not only that, it doesn't
contain any text at all, even though we can read it with our eyes and brains.
Using Acrobat's Find command is
guaranteed to yield no results. This PDF file is a picture of words, not
actually searchable characters. Acrobat has a terrific OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine built in, allowing us to
take an image-based PDF file and convert the shapes of letters and words into
actual text.
A
brand new feature in Acrobat 9 Professional is an OCR option called ClearScan. ClearScan analyzes the pages
of your image-based PDF and determines which regions contain text and which
contain foreground and background images. The shapes of individual text
characters are analyzed, and Acrobat actually assembles a unique scalable font
within the document. This makes a markedly smaller PDF file that is searchable,
looks amazing, and will print faster thanks to the custom fonts being utilized.
To use ClearScan, open an image-based PDF and
choose Document > OCR Text
Recognition > Recognize Text Using OCR. Click the Edit button to set your OCR options. Be sure to select ClearScan as your PDF Output Style.
Once
complete, zoom way in to the text to see that the original escalator-like
pixels have been smoothed by using the custom font. Do a Find or Search. Also
check out the document's size by visiting the Document Properties Description
tab. Amazing!
computer graphic artist, and Web page developer. And if that wasn't
enough, of course David is an Adobe-certified expert in Adobe Acrobat.
ClearScan OCR option is also available in Acrobat 9 Standard edition.
ClearScan OCR option is also available in Acrobat 9 Standard edition.
ClearScan OCR option is also available in Acrobat 9 Standard edition.