Can I improve the look of a scanned pdf?

[randyw57]

I have a pdf of about 28 pages.
I believe the pdf was created by scanning. 
So the results aren't 28 pages of text. It is 28 images of pages. (I think. I may be wrong.)

The text on these pages (it is all text) is blurry. 
Is there a way I could improve the look of this? Or possibly export the text to some other format?
fwiw, the document is attached. 

Thanks for any help or advice!

[gary_sc · Accepted solution]

Hi Randy,

With a lot of work, you could open it in Photoshop and "help" it be better, but it will still not be good. The only way to fix this and make it "OK to good"would be to do a proper scan at the beginning of the process.

As you can see when you look at the pages, you have a lot of bleed-through where you can see the text on the other side of the page. To fix this you need to lighten the whites at the time of the scan so that this gray is white. Then also, take the darker grays and make them black to make the text stand out more. You can kinda-sorta do this in Photoshop but it will never be good.

Sorry

[randyw57]

Thanks, gary_sc!

Well, miracles happen sometimes. Maybe next time.

The document was passed along to me.  I believe the source may be in an archive in Maryland.

It has my dad's name in it. I'll think about trying to get over there and finding it.

Again, I really appreciate you looking at this and laying out the options.