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Participant
October 31, 2023
Question

OCR on Perpendicular Text

  • October 31, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 1123 views

Hello, I was wondering if it is possible to OCR both normal and perpendicular text in a document using Acrobat Pro's OCR feature? I've tried searching around and most questions seem to come up about Adobe rotating the document rather than scanning rotated text. Thanks.

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1 reply

gary_sc
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2023

Hi, @Che33296743ytf5, yes, that's what I've seen. Acrobat can handle text in one direction. If all of your text were vertical, it would rotate the page so that the text was horizontal. If some of your text were vertical, at some point, it would make a choice (probably not AI-driven), and the page would either be rotated for the vertical or remain focused on the horizontal, and the "other" one would probably remain a picture of the text and would not be OCRed.

 

What I do not know is how it would handle text that is verticle but stacked so that each letter is normal but on top of the other. 

 

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I need to try this one of these days…

 

 

 

 

Participant
October 31, 2023

I see, thanks! Is there a way to enforce the direction of the OCR scan so that I can capture the vertical text as well? Perhaps by masking portions of the document? Or (preferably) a setting on the OCR tool?

gary_sc
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 31, 2023

There may be other ways I am unaware of, but like the old adage: "If all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail":

 

I use Photoshop a lot. If you do not mind the tedious of this work, I'd scan, and then try to copy and paste the content as you need. I'm not wholly certain this will work, though, but that's the direction I'd try.

 

Actually, the specific direction I'd go is to go to the original document using the original application. That's always the best way to go, but I gather that's not an option you have. Sorry.

 

Maybe someone else has some better ideas.