Topic: convert to searchable PDF

Does anyone have a suggestion on how to convert either a TIFF or PDF to a searchable PDF?

I know Acrobat Pro can do it but I just need something for one large document and then never use again. If there is something free for linux, that would be great. If not...maybe a trial version of something that won't watermark?

Thanks in advance!

Later,

C:\

Probably not quite what you're looking for, but I found examples like this one (uses OCR on images to make text-searchable PDFs) on VeryPDF.com ...

Okay, so they're not necessarily free, and probably not linux-specific, but that particular one comes with a 30-day money-back thingymajig. Perhaps you'll even decide to keep it. Who knows?

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Microsoft have discovered a cure for cancer! They'll release it as soon as they find a way to stop anyone using it...

gocr, ocrad, clara, ocre

I think it was one of gocr or ocrad that was decent.

reisio,

have any idea how I can take the output from gocr and make it a searchable pdf? From what I can see of gocr, it makes an TeX HTML XML and ASCII files.

Later,

C:\

ugghhh...gocr only takes PAM, PPM, PGM or PBM files. I have TIFF or PDF only.

(Edited by CPrompt on 03-13-2007 22:45)

TIFF or PDF? Why?

Last I checked you can search text...more easily than you can a PDF, even.

Any decent image converter can handle those formats.

quote:

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reisio said:

TIFF or PDF? Why?

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I am trying to figure out a different solution a problem one of our clients is having. The hard copies of the documents are scanned and they can only be TIFF or PDF. Limitations of the scanners. After that, the document needs to be turned into a searchable PDF. For some reason, these documents are not ocring. I've never had a problem with ocr before. If it came to a document that it couldn't ocr, the software would tell you and move on to the next page. It just craps out all over itself though.

At any rate, I have tried a *bunch* of software to try to convert these documents to searchable pdf's. Nothing can do some of them. Nature of ocr though.

thanks for the help!

Later,

C:\

We use ABBYY FineReader at work.