How do I straighten scanned pages in Adobe Acrobat DC?

[terim64602548]

How can I straighten scanned PDF pages in Adobe Acrobat DC?

[tomicaf86497706]

This worked perfectly for me! Thank you!

[LynnCrozier]

Thank you for offering that example - disappointingly, my just-downloaded version of Acrobat for Mac Monterey doesn't offer that capability. Bummer!!! That's the whole reason I signed up for a subscription, to fix an important but badly skewed document from a medical provider. Oh well! But thanks again for sharing what worked for you.

[NDAPhoto]

Karl's answer is correct, but incomplete. After choosing the Enhance settings, select the Recognize Text menu and click the blue "Recognize Text" button. This executes the optical character recognition. Each page in the document will be converted to OCR and then rotated to deskew the page. (I am using Acrobat Pro DC on 4/14/19).

[erlksdfhqp]

How is this remotely acceptible?

This disaster piece of malware is on version 20(?) and is generations behind the simplest free iPhone apps.

AAADDDOOOOOBBBBEEEE!

[PAFC]

FYI, I finally fixed my skewed scan by following the instructions for straightening an image (and I'm using free trial rn of Adobe DC).  After edit, it automatically selected the text as one object and the image as another. Upon right clicking it fixed the skewing.  The second one I opened and edited, it fixed them without me doing anything.

Align images or objects

1. Open the PDF in Acrobat, and then choose Tools > Edit PDF > Edit .
2. Select the object (or objects) - press and hold the Shift key and then click the objects one-by-one.
3. Under Objects in the right hand panel, click Align Objects and choose the appropriate alignment option.

[jody micheller26125032]

How is it possible that this is so mush worse than older versions of Adobe Pro?  What am I paying for??  

If I use deskew (with or without text recognition), my document is completely unusable.  Did anyone test this?

[PAFC]

Hi - when I open the scanned document with Adobe.  Here is the scanned document (it's not super skewed, but you can see it's off.:

Here it is after I clicked edit pdf and it performed the "recognizing text"

That's how I've been fixing it with a text document.

[Soaked5E0C]

Just ran into this thread due to having a similar issue. I find it also absolutely unbelievable that such expensive program doesn't have a simply feature as free form rotation option. And even if you get it working, it's still messes up the quality quite a lot.

[Shirley5C7F]

The pages I just edited are skewed a little - I couldn't scan them myself because the place where I scan is closed for Covid, so a friend did it for me, and I didn't want to be too fussy. I rotated them 90 degrees, cropped them, removed the specks, put the single pages into one 42-page file, and posted it on the website. Some day, when this pandemic is over, I will scan it myself and be very, very careful to get it perfectly straight, and do the rest over again. If I had seen this page before it was all done, yes I would have tried deskewing it too, but when I have done that in photo programs - even very good ones - the type has always lost some quality, and it is probably more important to have it sharp and clear than completely straight.

[hingepost]

Amazing that you need to ask this question. I ran into the same problem when
I tried DC. With Acrobat 9 Pro, all you had to do was OCR recognition on a
document or page. Not only did it make the text selectable but it
straightened and turned every page so the document was readable. I dumped DC
and went back to 9 Pro. I tried to communicate with Adobe but, as you
probably know, that isn't easy. I documented my problem with DC and sent
notes. That was a year ago and it sounds like no one cared enough to fix
it!!! Go back to 9 Pro.

[Shirley5C7F]

I think my next Acrobat will be 9 Pro. Thanks!

Actually, I might have the option to deskew the pages, but have put all 42 into a single file and posted them, and they are tilted only a tiny bit (not all of them). I might even have to crop them again, and it was quite a task to get them all exactly the same width. So I will leave alone for now, and maybe go back and deskew them later.

[Shirley5C7F]

This isn't the only program that had better features in earlier versions! I use Finale - the full version because I use it in my work. When I updated I could hardly believe it - Finale used to have a wonderful .pdf help section with searchable topics - whatever you wanted to do, it was a snap to find it. I could hardly believe that the newer version had help files that were not accessible at all! They are html, and visible if you look in the program files, but NOT accessible from the program. People have been finding work-arounds, like creating a shortcut from the program files to the desktop. Finale and Acrobat are both high-end programs and I would think they would do better.

Then there is the disappearance of "All Lists" on eBay. No use putting things into many lists if you can't see them all at once. They get lost. What is the world coming to? 😉

[Shirley5C7F]

WOW! I just tried it, and it works like magic in Acrobat 7! I didn't have to use a "deskew" function, only converted it to searchable text, and it is just as clear as the original - identical to it, in fact - but straight! I hate to assemble it all over again, but will extract the noticeably skewed pages, deskew them this way, and replace them. Thanks! (And my next version will be 9; I will avoid DC. My Reader is DC, but it ends there.)

[marie_4276]

Eureka! That was the solution!

AAPro DC contains the "Scan & OCR" tool in the TOOLS bar. It is green and looks like a printer. I had to play with it a little to get the results I needed; here is what worked to deskew my badly skewed document:

- Tools/Scan & OCR

- Enhance

- Scanned document

Voila!  Thank you so much!

[MyerPj]

Thanks! It's always good to know what works 🙂

[manny-ksk]

We're experiencing the exact same issue in 2022! Version 2022.001.20117!  

Once upon a time, the enhance function used to work.  Now - it does not, at least not properly.  I deskewed 1 out of 3 pages of a scanned document - but much like the original post, it failed on the 2 form pages (some text, mostly blank grid spaces to be filled in) that were badly skewed.  

I did find a solution though - when I opened the "Edit PDF" tool, it rescanned the document, ran OCR and deskewed all pages correctly.  ADOBE - why can't your enhance scan tool work??  

This shouldn't have 

[MyerPj]

I just used it on 2023 and it worked well. Don't forget to press the <Enhance> button.

So simply:

<Scan & OCR> (tool)
Enhance->Scanned Document
<Enhance> (if the settings are correct or default)

if not or to check

<Settings>

<Edit> (in the filters section)

Make sure DeSkew is on

OK

<Enhance>

You can choose whether or not to also "Recognize Text" from the options on the screen.

The only complaint I have is why Adobe has never saw fit to change to Camel Notation, with DeSkew instead of Deskew??

[Shirley5C7F]

I personally prefer Descew to DeScew. For some reason I've always been
annoyed by these caps in the middle of a word. Traditionalist, I guess. 😉

[Jeff351079061vii]

Where are these "Settings" - using Mac

[umijin]

The problem with the "Enhance" option for me is that it doesn't enhance the text image, but makes it remarkably worse, even choosing the highest quality jpeg.

Recognize Text will deskew if you choose the option to make it Editable Text and Imagess in the settings for Recognize text.  You can also deskew a page at a time if you click on the Edit PDF tool. It will then apply deskewing to every page you scroll to.

[nwjh1957]

To update the answer and note the Mac version of Acrobat Pro (2022.003).

  Open the Scan and OCR tool.

  In the tool menu bar, click on Enhance.

  Select Scanned Document from the drop down menu.

  Click on the Enhance button and the tool will go through your document and straighten all the text.

  Done!

I'm not sure how it will go on pages with very little text, as that appears to have been an issue in the past.

[AdUser0924]

Moved to Tracker Software PDF-XChange. The very best IMHO.

[Will-M3]

As we slowly wean our company away from Adobe due to the removal of useful features (like deskewing), and the addition of debilitating features (constant blue "help" bubbles that can't be turned off), we find ourselves using Bluebeam Revu more and more often. It's much more powerful for our needs as a general contractor and for general business document manipulation.

In Bluebeam Revu, deskewing is a two-step process that works perfectly:
1. Using your keyboard, Press Ctrl+Alt+D. Your cursor will change to crossbars. 
2. Click and drag a line that should be horizontal in the PDF.

[davidj62580202]

NONE of these deskew hints work with large blueprint scans where text recognition is undesirable (Acrobat Pro 2024).  We just want to rotate the entire image in (far) less than 90 degree increments!

[MyerPj]

Can you put the image into Photoshop and straighten it there?