PDFScanner - Scanning and OCR 4+
Felix Rotthowe
-
- £19.99
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
My goto scanning/OCR app
Of all the scanning & OCR apps I have that's the one I keep returning to. It scans the whole page (some other apps eat the sides), the fake duplex option is really useful. The OCR is good enough.
Things that could be improved include the possibility to undo the deskew on one page after many have been scanned (and improve the quality of the deskew on pages with lots of graphics; it works well on pages with mostly text). More options to do/undo the work on a page basis. More control on the colour correction would also be welcome. It would be helpful to also have the possibility to save a page as a graphic (JPG/PNG) so not to have to use another app (such as Preview) when that's needed.
I switched away from this app when on a previous version of the app and macOS it stopped scanning in colour with the Samsung scanner I'm using. That has been fixed and this is again my preferred scanning/OCR app.
Affordable OCR
An affordable way to scan documents with OCR (meaning that Spotlight can search the content of the resulting PDFs, not just their filenames). “Fake Duplex” is a great feature for those scanning duplex-printed documents with a device which will only scan one side.
A few suggestions for improvement: 1) add keyboard shortcuts (so I can just press a key to quickly start a scan, rather than have to move my mouse around). 2) Allow individual pages to quickly be rotated 90 degrees after they have been scanned. 3) Allow “OCR Date (month-name)” to be added to the file name format (so for example, if the OCR scan picks up “10” as the month number, it will automatically use “October” in the file name format). 4) Add an option to “clear and scan”, meaning the previous document can be cleared and the next scanned in a single click (rather than two) - the idea of the software is speed, after all. 5) Display the filename of the PDF document after it has been saved at the top of the main window (rather than just “PDFScanner”).
Keep up the good work!
Beautifully well designed scanning app
This software is first rate, well designed and is very stable. I have not had any problems scanning documents using an epson photo RX685 printer scanner.
I know that the built in preview app on OSX can do the same thing, but I find because the app is lightweight, it is fast in loading and also scans very quickly.
All in all, a very worthwhile app to purchase, and I don't have any regrets at all.
This app keeps getting better and better. Ultra reliable, and the new UI is sleek and modern. I use it every day.
Updated:
Updates are timely and quality of the app is consistent with small incremental additions. Also the included automator action is brilliant if you wish to batch OCR folders full of PDF’s etc
The developer customer service with help and support issues are 1st rate.
I would definitely recommend PDFscanner, it is rock solid with a beautiful simplified interface. Highly recommended.
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 based on, for example, the features you use or your age. Learn More
Information
- Provider
- 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
- £19.99
Supports
-
Family Sharing
Up to six family members can use this app with Family Sharing enabled.