Scanner scans but doesn't create pdf

Hi @Stu Janis,

I recently shared the following with a PC user who had different issues but was also frustrated at the inability to scan through Acrobat Pro with their PC. Maybe you'll find something of use in the following. 

Acrobat cannot scan, at least not by itself. There is NO scanning function within Acrobat. Rather, Acrobat uses other software to do the scanning. On a PC, this is done via a "linking" software called Twain. On the Mac, Twain is not allowed for the same reasons they kicked off Flash (too many potential virus issues). So what they do instead is to provide a TWAIN link to Apple's "Image Capture." (If you cannot scan through your scanner's native software, see if you can scan through Image Capture.)

Unfortunately, Image Capture is a major piece of **** scanning software. It is the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the quality of the scan.

I encourage you to continue scanning with your scanner’s software, save your scans in the TIF format, and leave the files on your desktop (or wherever convenient). Then, you can drag the files onto the Acrobat icon in the Dock. If you save the files as TIF images, Acrobat will automatically OCR them; there's nothing else you have to do. If you drag more than one file onto the Acrobat icon, Acrobat will ask you if you want all of these files merged into one document or to remain as separate documents.  (If you save in any other format, the auto OCR dynamic will not happen, and you'll need to add to your workload by adding an OCR step to your activities.)

Some extra tips and bits of information: A full-page, 300 ppi, 8-bit TIF file will be about 8 MB. (16-bit will be about 16 MB); once they are processed into a PDF, they will drop down to about 100-150 kb, so do not worry about the size. Assuming that you've done a pre-scan to set the Levels settings to get a clean image and you're doing a stack of pages from the same source, there's no need to do subsequent pre-scans. The first scan will be document.tif. The 2nd document will be document (2).tif, the third will be document (3).tif., etc. When you process those in Acrobat, the first scanned page will end at the end of the PDF as the last page. You can either fix this in the "Organize Pages" or, before processing in Acrobat, change the name in the Finder for document.tif to document (1).tif. (There's no way around this because this is up to the Finder or Explorer for naming, not the scanning software.