PDFdesk

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Improve a Scanned PDF

Lift a grey or washed-out scan so the text reads clearly.

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How it works


Brightness and contrast are applied to each page and the result is re-encoded, optionally in grey, which usually makes a faint pencil-and-paper scan far more legible and smaller at the same time. Because it works on pixels, the output is images: if your document already has real text, this is the wrong tool and it will say so.

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Questions


Will this help a photograph of a page?
Often, yes. Contrast is what makes uneven phone-camera lighting readable.
Why did it warn me about text?
Because the document already had a text layer, which this removes. That is a bad trade unless the pages really are scans.
What settings should I use?
Start with the defaults. Raise contrast for faint originals, brightness for dark ones.