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Images to PDF

How to make a searchable PDF from phone photos

By DeckleUpdated

To make a searchable PDF from phone photos, first turn the photos into a PDF with JPG to PDF or HEIC to PDF and choose Create PDF. That PDF holds pictures of the pages, so the text is not yet searchable. Then add a text layer with optical character recognition (OCR), using Deckle's Make PDF searchable tool, which is in beta, or another OCR app.

JPG to PDF

The page and its words

Page image

Visible marks and letters

Recognised text

Words to search and copy

Compare the words with the image

Conceptual illustration · recognition adds text; it does not establish that every word is correct.

How to make a searchable PDF from phone photos

  1. Photograph each page flat, straight on and in even light. Clear photos give better recognition.
  2. Open JPG to PDF for .jpg photos or HEIC to PDF for .heic photos. Choose Select files, or drop the photos onto the page.
  3. Put the pages in order with the up and down arrows and turn any sideways page with its rotate button. OCR reads upright text best.
  4. Choose Fit inside A4 and Portrait under Page size, then choose Create PDF and download the PDF.
  5. Open the PDF in Make PDF searchable. Choose the Document language, then All pages or Choose pages.
  6. Choose Make searchable, download the result and search it for a word you can see on the page.

The image step's result screen says how many pages were created. After OCR, the pages look the same as before; the difference is that you can now select and search the text.

Why the first PDF is not searchable

A photo is a grid of coloured pixels. When you convert it, Deckle places that picture on a PDF page. The page looks like a document, but to the PDF reader it is one image: there are no letters in it to find. Try it: open the converted PDF and press Ctrl+F or Cmd+F for a word on the page. Nothing is found.

OCR fixes this by reading the shapes of the letters and adding an invisible layer of text behind the picture, positioned over the words. The picture stays exactly as it was. Search, copy and paste then use the hidden text.

Take photos that OCR can read

Recognition is only as good as the photo. Before you convert, check each one for:

  • Sharp text. Zoom in on the smallest print. If it is blurred to you, it is blurred to OCR.
  • Straight lines of text. A tilted phone makes lines curve or slope, which causes misread words.
  • Even light. A shadow across a line can hide letters; glare on glossy paper wipes them out.
  • The right way up. Rotate sideways photos before converting. Holding a phone flat over a page often stores the photo sideways; see why a HEIC photo is sideways in the PDF.
  • Enough resolution. A standard phone photo is fine. Photos shrunk by a messaging app may be too small.

How to turn a photo of a document into a PDF has more on taking a clean shot.

Run OCR and check the result

In Make PDF searchable, the Document language setting matters: English, German, French and Spanish are offered, and choosing the language on the page improves accuracy. Choose pages limits which pages are read, but the output still contains the whole PDF.

If some pages already contain text, Pages with readable text lets you Skip these pages or Read them again. Reading them again may add duplicate or incorrect text.

OCR makes mistakes. Check the words that matter most:

  • Names, dates and reference numbers, where one wrong character changes the meaning
  • Amounts, where 5 and 6 or 1 and 7 are easily confused
  • Faint, handwritten or decorative text, which is often skipped

Search for a few of them in the result. If one is missing or wrong, retake that photo and run the steps again. Searchable text does not make the PDF accessible to screen-reader users on its own.

Tips

  • Convert on a computer. iPhone and iPad scale each photo down to 4 megapixels, and fewer pixels can mean weaker text recognition. Computers and Android devices keep up to 16 megapixels.
  • Keep the photo PDF. The image-only PDF is a clean copy you can run OCR on again with different settings.
  • Mix formats in two runs. Convert HEIC and JPG photos separately and join them with Merge PDFs before OCR, so one OCR run covers the whole document.
  • Use Fit inside A4. OCR does not need it, but recipients usually expect A4 pages, and a phone photo at Match each image is over 50 inches wide.

Other ways to make phone photos searchable

  • Preview on iPhone. When you export an image as a PDF in the Preview app, Apple lists an Embed Text option that runs text recognition and makes the PDF searchable (Export PDFs and images in Preview on iPhone).
  • A scanning app on the phone. Many scanning apps straighten the page and run OCR as they save the PDF. That skips the conversion step, but you depend on the app's own recognition.
  • Adobe Acrobat. The desktop app recognises text in scanned PDFs under All tools > Scan & OCR, as Adobe describes in Recognise text in scanned documents. You can run it on the PDF Deckle made.

Frequently asked questions

Does JPG to PDF make the text searchable?

No. JPG to PDF, PNG to PDF, HEIC to PDF and TIFF to PDF place pictures on pages. Searchable text needs an OCR step afterwards.

Will OCR change how the pages look?

No. The text layer is invisible and sits behind the picture. The page looks the same.

Can OCR read handwriting?

Not reliably. OCR is built for printed text. Expect handwritten notes to be missed or misread.

Which languages can Deckle recognise?

Make PDF searchable offers English, German, French and Spanish.

Related tools

Sources