Straighten scanned PDFs in Acrobat DC?

[pc-edi]

Hi. Is there a way to straighten scanned PDFs from within Acrobat DC? I don't want to use external packages (e.g. Illustrator) to do this. These are older scanned PDFs that we have on file i.e. there's no possibility of re-scanning as the original documents are long gone.

If there's nothing automatic, is there a "free rotate" option where things can be rotated to some arbitrary degree?

PaperPort had/has a great feature where you draw a line to indicate the horizontal/vertical alignment of a page, and the page would rotate to match the line's orientation. (One for the wishlist!)

Thanks for any assistance on this.

[Bernd Alheit]

In the Action Wizard of Acrobat Pro you can try the action "Optimize Scanned Documents".

[TimothyCreech]

That made the text of the document a lot less clear.

[sunup]

Precisely.

And *that* is the problem .. when you deskew, then the text becomes less legible, the quality degrades. You should be able to have drag handles at each corner and just "tilt" the page as required. This was possible in older versions .. maybe v.8 or 9, don't remember, but to remove that feature is definitely a retrograde step!

[Bernd Alheit]

It is possible in Adobe Acrobat DC Pro.

[TimothyCreech]

How???

[Bernd Alheit]

With drag handles at the corner of the image you can "tilt" the image.

[sunup]

I thought that's what we were talking about.

[poa00]

is this possible with pages (not images) in Acrobat Pro X? I see that @Bernd Alheit, you mention it's possible, but then refer to the tilting an "image" rather than a page.

[Stijlwheel · Accepted solution]

Similar to Acrobat XI, DC has the option under the "Tools" menu. Click on  the "Tools" tab. Scroll down to "Protect & Standardize". Click on "Optimize PDF". Find the "Optimize Scanned Pages" link above the page view. The "Descew" option is under the "Filters" field.

[marianneb48551723]

Don't you need to have Acrobat Pro to have this option?

[johnt92001013]

Please, Descrew should be on or off? thanks.

[dainiswmichel]

well, to continue in the direction of reducing usability, adobe has "added" de-skewing to the functionality of recognizing text.

so, if you "recognize text," the document will de-skew -- but of course it will also recognize text -- even if that is not what you want.

[Curtiosity]

You can uncheck the box to recognize text - you can customize what you want to happen with the optimize as Stijlwheel explained.

[jen40]

I found that in Acrobat Standard DC you can manually rotate a page in a scanned PDF by going to Edit, selecting the page/image (CTRL+A works), and hovering your mouse over one of the corners until you see the rotate symbol. You can then drag your mouse to the desired rotation angle, as long as it is an even integer. Yes, you can only rotate by 2° at a time.

[metallums18]

This works, but as said only in 2 degree increments.  Straight up trash option really.  Acrobat DC Pro is rough these days.  I'm not afraid to say it.  The strange issues revolving tools packaged into the OCR/EDIT/Enhanced Scan features have gotten worse and worse over the years.  Many years back this was much more capable.

[MarissaBaker]

There is no "Protect & Standardize" in Tools. How do I de-skew a PDF in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC?

[LittleDevilDee]

Protect & Standardize is not "visible" unless you add it to the vertical tool pane, which is off to the right size (different from the horizontal toolbar at the top). The way that I add and remove tools (there are severals ways) is by choosing the tools tab and simply dragging and dropping.  

I realize you comment is quite old, but maybe this will helps someone who stops by at a later time, as I did today.