how do I completely turn Optimization off in Acrobat X?

Hi lavswn13999,

It "sounds" like the page is being scanned but not being converted via OCR-ing into searchable text.

On the Mac, the only link between Acrobat and my scanner is Apple's "Image Capture." It's horrible beyond belief so I always scan using "real" scanning software into TIF documents and then drag-drop the results onto Acrobat to create searchable text. It's typical for the original TIF image to be 20 MB in size and the converted OCR-ed version to be 75-125 kb per page.

So my first question is "are the documents converted into searchable text?"

My second question is: "if you are creating searchable text, there are three options under "PDF Output Style." The first allows you to downsample the image (which is fine to do AFTER the OCR-ing) below will have a larger files size because it keeps all of the pixels on the page.

My suggestion is to try all three on the same document and see if of one of these are getting the same result that you currently have and to not use that option.

•Searchable Image

Ensures that text is searchable and selectable. This option keeps the original image, deskews it as needed, and places an invisible text layer over it. The selection for Downsample Images in this same dialog box determines whether the image is downsampled and to what extent.

•Searchable Image (Exact)

Ensures that text is searchable and selectable. This option keeps the original image and places an invisible text layer over it. Recommended for cases requiring maximum fidelity to the original image.

•ClearScan

Synthesizes a new Type 3 font that closely approximates the original, and preserves the page background using a low-resolution copy.

Whatever the actual problem is, there is some other setting that letting these be so ginormous. Optimization should not be doing what you are assuming that it's doing.

Please let us know the result.

How do you know it optimises the scan? What do you expect to see, and what do you see? Perhaps the other app is doing text recognition, which is a separate step in Acrobat X.