How do I deskew scanned documents?

Forum|Forum|10 years ago
September 19, 2015
3 replies
17346 views

I have a scanned document, a simple list of text. It's crooked, and I want to straighten it.

I know that the 'enhance PDF' will produce a list of options, one of which is 'deskew.' I've done that. It didn't help; the document is still crooked. Am I missing something? I just want to rotate the whole image by a small amount; I don't really care if it's automatic or I have to do it.

Acrobat Pro DC for Mac, Yosemite 10.10.5. The scan was with a cheap HP all-in-one, if that matters, but it shouldn't.

Thanks,

/s/ Rankin Johnson IV

rankin@briefwright.com

Correct answer try67

Try running Text Recognition on the file. That should deskew it automatically.

G

Genki_Guy_Robert

Participant

I'm in grad school and now get old, long (pre-Internet) scholarly articles with TWO columns at odd angles. As far as I can figure out, OCR can fix ONLY HALF of the document. The other half either gets entirely missed, or distastrously "corrected". Should I attempt to split the document, screen shot one half (or EACH) page, then create a *new* PDF? That could be exhausting for docs of 30+ pages.

S_S

Community Manager

Hi @Genki_Guy_Robert,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for the trouble, and the delayed response.

In case you are still looking for a solution, here are my comments on it.

You don't necessarily need to manually split and screenshot the document. Try these steps first:

Use "Recognize Text in This File" (Enhanced OCR)
- In Acrobat, go to Scan & OCR > Recognize Text > In This File.
- Click Settings and choose "Editable Text and Images".
- Under "Page Layout", select "Both Columns" if available.
Deskew and Straighten Pages
- If the text is at odd angles, go to "Scan & OCR" > "Enhance" before running OCR.
Manually OCR the Left and Right Columns Separately
- If OCR is still failing on one side, use the "Recognize Text in This File" tool, but process only one half at a time using cropping:
  - Make a copy of the PDF.
  - Open the copy, go to "Edit PDF" > "Crop Pages".
  - Crop the left column, save, and run OCR.
  - Do the same for the right column.
Split Pages into Single Columns Automatically
- Use Preflight (Acrobat Pro only):
  - Open Preflight (Ctrl + Shift + X / Cmd + Shift + X).
  - Search for "Split pages" and apply a two-column split.