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Ocr Pdf Mac Free

PDFs provide a convenient way for sharing documents, lots of people choose to save their files in PDF. Even when you scan a document, the files may be saved in PDF by default. But a scanned PDF or image PDF is just a large image file, in which the PDF text is not searchable, nor indexable — unless you perform OCR on the PDF file.

This article will introduce multiple solutions on how to OCR PDF on Mac with best PDF OCR apps supporting batch feature, or OCR PDF on Mac for free. Also, there are some basics you need to know about PDF OCR on Mac.

  • Free online tool to recognize text in documents via OCR. Creates searchable PDF files. Without installation. Without registration.
  • Download PDF Converter OCR for macOS 10.10 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. ‎Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a PDF Converter with OCR capability. It can accurately convert normal or scanned pdf to Word, Excel, Pages, Image, Text, Html, Keynote, etc.

Do PDF OCR

Part 1. Best PDF OCR Apps for Mac 2021 (Batch PDF OCR)

Steps to OCR PDF and Image Files on Mac. As Cisdem's mac ocr tool offers free trial with full features, here we will take Cisdem PDF Converter OCR, the most affordable and efficient way as a demonstration to OCR a PDF on mac. Launch Cisdem PDF OCR Program for Mac. Download Cisdem PDF Converter OCR and then install it on Mac. Optical Character. Transform any image, scanned document, or printed PDF to editable documents in seconds using our FREE. online Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature. Use our FREE. online OCR feature to recognize text from images. Your files are only stored on our servers for 24 hours, after which they are permanently destroyed. Adobe Reader for Mac is also widely used for Mac users to view and manage PDF documents since it is a free tool. Unfortunately, this program doesn't support OCR technology. This means you won't be able to edit a scanned or image-based PDF file unless you pay for the upgraded version of Adobe Acrobat to edit or manipulate the scanned PDF document.

To OCR PDF documents on mac, we will need to apply the OCR technology, which helps to recognize texts from image-based files and turn them into digital, editable text that can be understood by your devices. While, a PDF OCR program is powered with such an OCR engine to recognize scanned or image documents.

In fact, OCR is rarely accurate or affordable, but we have choice. Here, basing on affordability, simplicity and OCR performance, we recommend PDF Converter OCR. It is a PDF OCR program designed to do virtually all kinds of document conversion with high quality results.

Batch OCR PDF on Mac

  • Make scanned PDFs and images editable, searchable, copyable;
  • Recognize 200+ languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, etc.
  • Convert native PDFs to 16 formats;
  • Create PDF from other documents and compress/protect PDF;
  • Batch PDF OCR;
  • Extremely easy to use;
Free Download

Steps to (Batch) OCR PDF Files on Mac

  1. Launch Cisdem PDF OCR Program for Mac.
    Download Cisdem PDF Converter OCR and then install it on Mac. Run it to start OCR a PDF on mac.
    Free Download
  2. Add PDF Files for OCR on Mac.
    Go to the interface of 'Converter', import PDF to the program by drag and drop PDF files, or click the '+' button. It supports batch OCR PDF on mac, you can add dozens of files at one time.
  3. Tweak the 'OCR PDF' settings
    Turn the OCR button ON, select language and page range. It can recognize 200+ languages and supports batch or partial conversion. Also, choose output as needed before starting OCR PDF on mac.
  4. Start (Batch) OCR PDF on mac
    Click 'Convert' to perform OCR on PDF files. The OCR process will finish within seconds, you can find the converted file in output folder. The PDF OCR is done!

Also, you can watch the tutorial video to do mac ocr now.

Alternative PDF OCR App for Mac: Adobe Acrobat

For users who are looking for advanced OCR features, Adobe Acrobat is worth a try.

Adobe Acrobat (Price: From $12.99/month~$14.99/month), since its creation, is always considered as the most powerful program to deal with PDFs, and its prominence apparently continues in PDF OCR. Besides, it is cross-platform allowing different users to benefit from this feature.

Speaking of its PDF OCR, Adobe Acrobat can automatically perform OCR on scanned files when exporting to an editable formats, but it also offers a set of tools to enhance the OCR performance, for example, capturing the file with mac camera to do ocr, choose pages to perform partial pdf ocr, copying recognized text with formatting, editing the PDF file after ocr directly.

Undoubtedly, Adobe’s editing feature is the key persuading users into such a purchase. As we know, OCR is rarely perfect, even if there appears OCR errors, users can directly edit or rectify within Adobe, that’s quite convenient.

Steps to OCR PDF on Mac with Adobe

  1. Open PDF with Adobe Acrobat.
  2. Go to Tools> Enhance Scans, select 'Enhance', you can choose to OCR all pages or current page, then all the PDF text is searchable and selectable, also you can right click on the text to choose 'Edit Text' within the program.
  3. Finally, save the PDF file or go to Tools> Export as Word or other formats.

>>>Watch Adobe Mac OCR Tutorial Video

Part 2. How to OCR PDF on Mac Free (Freeware & Online)

To OCR a PDF on Mac for free, there are 2 workarounds, either using a piece of offline PDF OCR freeware or an online, free PDF OCR tool.

Yet, we know that offline Mac OCR PDF application is seldom free, if one PDF OCR program is given for free, it must come with limited features, like LEADTOOLS OCR Application.

Also, when we search in Google, we can find there are several websites doing OCR on a PDF or an image on mac for free. However, many of them cannot handle images of poor quality. So people have to ensure they have high quality images when using these online PDF OCR tools, otherwise accuracy will be adversely impacted. Here we pick the best online option for you to OCR a PDF, which give good results than the other online sites in our test.

#1 PDF OCR Freeware for Mac (LEADTOOLS)

It is a free Mac program to OCR PDF and image files, you can recognize the file one page by one page, or recognize the whole document at one time, and export files as PDF, RTF, LTD, TXT, DOCX, SVG, XML, HTML, EPUB or MOB format. This PDF OCR program will display both original file and recognized text on the same interface, for you to check the real-time OCR result. However, the OCR result is quite poor at rending images and keeping formatting.

Advantages:

  1. OCR PDF and Image;
  2. Recognize multiple-page PDF;
  3. Export files as 10 formats;

Disadvantages:

  1. Cannot render images and keep formatting in the OCRed output file;
  2. There are PDF OCR errors and need manual corrections;
  3. Doesn’t support batch OCR PDF on Mac;
  4. Take time to process PDF OCR;

Steps to OCR A PDF on Mac with Freeware LEADTOOLS

  1. Download and install LEADTOOLS OCR Application on your Mac;
  2. Click Open Document to upload PDF file, choose page range;
  3. Click Recognize to OCR PDF on Mac for Free;
  4. Click Save button and choose output format to save the PDF OCR result.

#2 online, free PDF OCR Tool (Convertio OCR)

Convertio OCR is a free web-based OCR service to OCR PDF. It can recognize text from PDF, GIF, BMP, JPEG, TIFF and other images. You can upload your PDF file for OCR from computer, Google Drive, Dropbox or via URL. Its bilingual-OCR support allows recognizing files composed of 2 different languages.

Advantages:

  1. OCR PDF and Image;
  2. Batch OCR;
  3. Support 50+ languages;
  4. Export files as 11 formats;

Disadvantages:

  1. Potential risk of information leakage;
  2. Need manually adjust the OCR errors;
  3. Take time to process PDF OCR;
  4. Only 10 pages for free PDF OCR;

Steps to (Batch) OCR PDF on Mac for Free with Convertio

  1. Go to Convertio OCR;
  2. Click 'Choose File' to upload files;
  3. Choose file language and select output format;
  4. Click 'Recognize' to do OCR on PDF;
  5. Download recognized file and check the OCR result;

Part 3. Things You Need to Know PDF OCR on Mac

What Does OCR Stand For?

OCR (Optical Character Recognition), it is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping system in an office, or to publish the text on a website.Without OCR, or to be specific, without Mac OCR software, the scanned PDF cannot be recognized by comuper, hence not allow you to edit or search.

Though there are some free tools coming with MacOS for users to deal with PDF files, like Preview and Automator, mac ocr service is not availble.

Can Preview OCR A PDF on Mac?

No!

Preview can help view and manage and edit PDF files on mac, but the editing feature is only limited to native PDFs. Though you can surely open scanned pdf in Preview, it is displayed as image files, no changes can be done to the file, including but not limited to copy text, search text, annotate, highlight, etc.

Can Adobe Reader OCR PDF on Mac?

No!

Some mac users may have installed Adobe Reader on their mac to view and manipulate PDFs since it is free and easy to view PDFs. However, it Adobe Reader cannot work to do OCR on mac, unless you update to or subscribe its Adobe Acrobat for mac.

Can PDF Expert Do OCR?

No!

PDF Expert is picked as the top 1 paid app in Mac App Store due to its beautiful design and powerful features. Most of its user expect its OCR feature can arrive soon, but there is no release note about its new version with OCR feature, maybe it is still on it way under development. Anyway, at present we cannot do OCR with PDF Expert.

Final Words

So, which one will you choose to do PDF OCR on your mac and make your scanned files editable for further use? There may be more choices out there, but the one well balancing functionality, OCR performance and simplicity, in my opinion, is Cisdem PDF Converter OCR. For users who want to keep their paper work simply but efficient, it is worth a try.

When converting scanned invoices, reports or images into editable formats, OCR is required. If you are looking for the best free OCR solutions for mac like many others, we collect a list for you: a list of 12 powerful mac free ocr software or online, free OCR services to perform satisfactory OCR on digitized files for 2021.

Full List of Mac Free OCR

PlatformInputOutput
1. PDF OCR X CommunityOfflinePDF and ImagePDF, Text
OfflinePDF and ImageText, Image
3. OneNote OCROfflinePDF and ImageText
4. OCR App by LEAD ToolsOfflinePDF and ImageText
5. Easy Screen OCR for MacOfflineScreenshotText
6. DigitEyeOCROfflineBMP and GIFText
7. Google DocsOnlinePDF and ImagePDF, Word, ODT, RTF, Text, HTML, ePub
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, Text
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, PPT, Text, ePub, HTML, etc.
OnlinePDF and ImageWord, Excel, Text, ePub, PPT, DjVu, etc.
OnlinePDF, Image and DjVuPDF, Word, Text
OnlinePDF and ImagePDF, Word, Text, RTF

Free Try on The Best Mac OCR Program

  • Perform OCR on scanned documents and images
  • OCR files and export as 10 editable formats
  • Advanced OCR settings to improve OCR accuracy
  • Batch OCR
  • Recognize 27~200 languages
  • High quality OCR results
Free Download

6 Best Free OCR Software for Mac in 2021

There are 2 types of free OCR solutions for Mac users, either online or offline. In this part, we list 6 top free OCR software for MacOS basing on text recognition accuracy and overall features.

1. PDF OCR X Community

Ocr

PDF OCR X Community is a simple drag-and-drop utility that converts single-page PDFs and images into text documents or searchable PDF files, it supports for more than 60 languages. For multi-page PDFs and batch conversion features, you need to pay its enterprise version.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-ocr-x-community-edition/id571442933?mt=12

Advantages:

  1. Extremely easy to use;
  2. Support both PDF and image;
  3. Recognize 60 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Free edition only OCR single-page PDF;
  2. Formatting is messed up when working on complicate files;
  3. Relatively slow OCR process;

2. Evernote

Evernote is a popular note-syncing service, enables users to collect, nuture and share ideas across desktop and mobile platforms. One of its easily overlooked features is automatic OCR service. Users will be allowed to add images into Evernote server for automatic OCR, you may have to wait, but 10 minutes will be quite enough to finish the OCR.

Download Address: https://evernote.com/download

Advantages:

  1. Available for all platforms (MacOS, Windows, iOS, Android);
  2. Support both PDF and image;
  3. Recognize 28 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Limited OCR feature when dealing with PDF (file size, pages, resolution, etc.);
  2. Relatively slow OCR processing;

Evernote OCR review, how-to guide and troubleshooting

Evernote is one of the best and most popular cross-platform note-taking apps. In this article, you will find how to use Evernote OCR and what to do if Evernote OCR is not working.

READ MORE >

3. OneNote OCR

Microsoft OneNote is a program to take and manage notes anytime and anywhere. It greatly facilitates the collaborations between team members. Not only limited to manually input texts to create notes, Microsoft OneNote also embeds the OCR feature, OneNote OCR allowing users to recognize texts from images, so the image texts can be copied and paste as editable or searchable note.

Download Address: https://www.onenote.com/download

Advantages:

  1. Available for all platforms;
  2. Support both PDF and image;

Disadvantages:

  1. Can only copy text from PDF or image, no formatting is retained;
  2. OCR fails or crashes sometimes;

How to Do OneNote OCR on Image or PDF(Mac, Windows, iPad)

An impressive feature of OneNote is its built-in capability to do OneNote OCR. Here we are going to introduce OneNote OCR, demonstrate how to OCR image or PDF with OneNote.

READ MORE >

4. OCR App by LEADTOOLS

OCR App by LEADTOOLS is a MacOS application designed to recognize and extract texts from images. Also it offers a set of tools to improve the OCR accuracy, such as tweak OCR Engine Settings, flip, reverse, adjust binarization or brightness of the image. It can also perform OCR on scanned PDFs, but only export files as text. If you want o convert uploaded files to other format with LEADTOOLS, you will need to copy and paste to the text processor accordingly.

Download Address: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/leadtools-ocr/id604393629?mt=12

Advantages:

  1. Easy to use;
  2. Advanced settings to improve OCR accuracy;
  3. Support both image and PDF;
  4. Fast OCR;

Disadvantages:

  1. Recognize only 5 languages;
  2. No formatting is retained, only text;

5. Easy Screen OCR for Mac

It is a light and simple Mac free OCR software to recognize texts from images. All you need to do is, capturing the screenshots of your file first, then performing OCR on the file to make the image text copyable. Also, it allows users to save the screenshot as PNG or PDF format. However, this free OCR software for mac only allows users to OCR 20 images for free.

Download Address: https://easyscreenocr.com/

Advantages:

  1. Easy to use;
  2. Small in size;
  3. Support to take screenshots from any files;

Disadvantages:

Ocr Pdf Mac Free Software

  1. Only 20 images can be processed with OCR;
  2. No formatting is retained;
  3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

6. DigitEyeOCR

Though DigitEyeOCR has discontinued to update for many years, for users who are using MacOS 10.10 and earlier, it is still worth a try. It is a free OCR software for mac to recognize texts from BMP and GIF images. If you want to do OCR on other image formats, you will need to convert the file to DigitEye OCR supported formats.

Download Address: https://digiteyeocr.en.softonic.com/mac

Disadvantages:

  1. Only support BMP and GIF;
  2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  3. Relatively slow OCR process;
  4. No update for years;

6 Best online, free Services for Mac

Also, there are quite a lot of online, free OCR services for mac users, but not all of them can actually perform OCR or bring satisfactory OCR results. And here we pick 6 best free OCR tools online according to our OCR testing.

7. Google Docs

Google Docs is a service offered by Google to manage web-based documents, like creating, editing Word, Spreadsheets, presentations, even store them online for easy access on different devices. Users can perform Google OCR on images, scanned PDFs, it is fast with basically satisfactory results.

Advantages:

  1. Support images and PDF;
  2. Excellent support on output format (searchable PDF, Word, ODT, RTF, TXT, HTML, ePub);
  3. Edit files after OCR processing within Google Docs;

Disadvantages:

  1. Require several steps to finish the OCR;
  2. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  3. Take time to process OCR;

8. Online OCR

Online OCR is an online OCR service that can recognize the texts and characters from scanned files and images. It requires no software installation, what you need to do is upload the file (not exceeding size of 5MB) as guided, choose the language and output format(Word, Excel or Text), then 'Convert' to start the OCR process. Once finish, a download link will be offered to download the converted file.

Advantages:

  1. Support both image and PDF;
  2. Easy to use;
  3. Export files as Word, Excel and Text;
  4. Recognize 46 languages;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;
  3. Max file size limit 15 MB;

9. Online2PDF

Online2PDF is another online platform to manage PDF files, such as editing, compressing ,unlocking ,converting, merging, protecting and so on. Comparing with other online, free OCR tools, Online2pdf offers extended features to customize the output and support more output formats.

Advantages:

  1. Batch OCR;
  2. Support both image and PDF;
  3. Excellent support for output format;
  4. Allow customizing output files;

Disadvantages:

  1. File quantity and size limit;
  2. Recognize only 6 languages;
  3. Unstable OCR accuracy;

10. ConvertioOCR

Convertio is an online, free tool to OCR image and scanned documents, then save them as various editable formats. You can upload files from local or via url, even icloud storage accounts. It allows users to perform OCR on a multiple-language file.

Pdf Ocr Software Mac

Advantages:

  1. Upload files from local, URl or icloud storage services;
  2. Recognize multiple-language file;
  3. Excellent support for output formats (11 formats);
  4. Convert all or specific pages;
  5. Save converted files to Dropbox or Google Drive;

Ocr Pdf To Word Mac Free

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Relatively slow OCR processs;
  3. Need to manually adjust the formatting;
  4. Only 10 pages can be done with OCR for free;

11. New OCR

New OCR can convert JPG, PNG, GIF, MBP, TIFF, PDF and DJVU files into Doc, TXT or PDF format. To improve the OCR accuracy, New OCR allows users to rotate images and analyze page layout before the OCR processing. If you want to export the files as other formats, you need to click the “Download” button at the bottom of its page to export.

Advantages:

  1. Support image, PDF and DjVu files;
  2. Export files as Word, Text and searchable PDF format;
  3. Allow to rotate or analyze page layout for more accurate OCR results;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Fail to do OCR sometimes;

12. Free Online OCR

Free Online OCR is a free service enabling users to convert images, scanned PDFs into editable and searchable text, such as DOC, RTF,TXT or PDF. It will rotate the pages automatically for accurate OCR, you can get editable files with nice formatting.

Advantages:

  1. Support both image and PDF;
  2. Export files as Word, PDF, Text and RTF;

Disadvantages:

  1. Unstable OCR accuracy;
  2. Need to manually adjust formatting in the output file;

What if Mac Free OCR Tools Fall Short?

However, these online/free mac OCR tools are not suitable for all mac users, you may feel not satisfied in one way or another:

  1. There is a size limit of the files;
  2. It doesn’t support various input or output format;
  3. Risk of privacy leakages;
  4. The tool doesn’t support your expected language;
  5. The OCR result is not satisfied;
  6. It is feature limited;

......

As we all know, “free” means you cannot get everything you desire from the service, if you require higher than those free services can offer, you will need to pay. This is also true to OCR services.

Ocr pdf mac free online

Best Solution If Mac Free OCR Software/Service Not Working

Choices on paid professional OCR software for Mac users are large in quantity. But if you are looking for the one combining simplicity, versatility and affordability, Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is absolutely the best choice.

Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a dedicated Mac OCR software to convert and create PDF, also perform OCR on scanned documents or images to make them editable & searchable. One thing makes Cisdem outperform its competitors is its high quality OCR performance：accurate OCR results and maintained original formatting.

Use Cisdem to OCR All Files Now

  • Convert PDF to 16 formats;
  • OCR scanned documents and images into Word, Excel, PPT, Keynote, Pages, etc;
  • Convert images;
  • Create PDF from virtually all documents;
  • Batch conversion;
  • High quality OCR and conversion results;
Free Download

Steps to Perform OCR on Files with Cisdem

  1. Add scanned PDF or image to Converter interface.
    Drag and drop, or click '+' to add files.
  2. Turn the OCR button ON, choose page range, file language and output format.
  3. Optional. Tweak the advanced OCR settings for more accurate results.
    Click the 'Settings' icon, a new interface will appear. You will find all the contents are marked as Texts, Images or Tables in different colorful boxes. If you want to output a part as table, remove the current mark box, click on 'Mark Tables' in the OCR applied zone, then drag a mark box to select the part you want to mark as Tables.
  4. Click “Convert” to start OCR.

Free Ocr Reader For Mac

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