Acrobat hangs when scanning

[danw42365919]

Running Adobe version 2025.001.20476 for Mac on iMac OS Sonoma 14.7.4 with Brother DCPL-2550DW Printer/Scanner

File > Create > PDF from Scanner

Custom Scan window opens; select Scanner; check optimize image; create new pdf; check recognize text (OCR)

Click Scan button

New window opens - nothing appears - see attached photo - program doesn't respond - have to force quit to exit program.

Printer drivers and utilities are up to date.

Uninstalled, rebooted and reinstalled Adobe. Uninstalled, have not reinstalled Adobe Reader and InDesign. Scanning issue persists. Originally presented itself following a three hour power outage.

At this point, I am out of ideas on how to fix the problem.  Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

[danw42365919]

Forgot to mention - Scanner does scan to other apps.

[gary_sc]

One important question, @danw42365919, can you scan via your scanner's software?

Here's the deal, on the Mac, when scanning directly from Acrobat, you are shunted to Apple's Image Capture software.

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

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 separate.  (If you save in any other format (e.g., jpg), 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 it is up to Finder or Explorer to name it, not the scanning software. FWIW, I use this latter approach.

As long as you'll be using better quality scanning software, here's a blog I wrote for Adobe with some tips on getting the best quality scan for OCR.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-community-professionals/scanning-clean-searchable-pdfs/m-p/4785...

Good luck!

[danw42365919]

Thank you for your response.  I appreciate your sharing your blog post.

What puzzles me is that the Acrobat software, my iMac and my printer/scanner worked flawlessly together until last week, so I don't know what changed. Your suggested solution has been my work around this week, but it is frustratingly inefficient.

Once again, thanks.

[Tariq Ahmad Dar]

Hi @danw42365919, 

Sorry for the troubled experience. It seems you have already tried almost all the troubleshooting I could have suggested. 

Let's try the following:

1. Try disabling protected mode at startup. This suggestion is for testing only: 

    To disable protected mode, you'll typically navigate to the application's settings, usually under "Options" or "Preferences," then find the " Protected View" or "Security (Enhanced)" section. Uncheck any options that enable protected mode and apply the changes. 

2. Try creating a new user profile on your machine and try again. 

If the issue persists, help us with the following: 

1.  https://adobe.ly/3Fmwja6 share log ID (Ensure to choose advanced logging).

2. Crash logs: https://adobe.ly/4jlj1J5. Upload logs to any cloud drive and share the link

3. Scanner driver ICA version installed.

Lastly, if possible, please capture a video of the workflow and share it with us

~Tariq

[danw42365919]

Tariq-

Suggestions 1 & 2 didn't work. Adobe Acrobat Helper launches whenever I start Adobe Acrobat now.

I uploaded log. Log ID 166b496b-bcc2-4cc3-b362-4a76edaa33cc.  Workflow steps are listed above and with submitted log.

I am not getting a "quit unexpectedly" prompt so didn't bother uploading crash log.

ICA Scanner Driver version is 3.0 

Grateful to you and your team for looking at this.

Thanks.

[gary_sc]

Hi, , FWIW, I've been doing things this way for as long as I can remember. The whole issue (to me) boils down to whether it's better to do something the way it's supposed to be done, albeit with a very poor quality tool, or do it a way that works with a vastly superior tool.

To see what I'm referring to, regarding the quality of scanning. Take a photograph, B&W or color, doesn't matter. Open Image Capture (you'll find that in your Applications folder) and do whatever enhancements you feel are necessary to improve the quality of the scan and save that to your desktop. Now, scan the same image with the scanning software that came with your scanner (make sure you're using the latest drivers; companies that make scanners do not do a good job of checking if your software is up to date; you have to look at their website). Now, scan the same image and enhance it as best as you can. Save that to your desktop. 

Finally, compare the two images. There is no question that your scanner's software will do a better job. Look at the regions where there is a gradation from dark to light, look at folds in fabrics, and look at the clouds. Image Capture cannot capture that properly. 

Simply, the needs of an excellent scan are pushed to the limit when it comes to OCR. Why rely upon dreadful software when the result of a scan may determine whether all of the text in your document is at risk?

Inefficient? Not at all when you consider what you're trading for to achieve greater accuracy for that slight bit of extra processing.