Why OCR results can be wrong

If a PDF already has selectable digital text, use PDF to Text first. OCR is for scans and images; running OCR on a digital PDF can introduce recognition errors that were not present in the source.

Low contrast, blur, shadows, skew, small text, photos taken at an angle, compressed screenshots, and rotated pages all reduce OCR quality. Use readiness and scan-quality checks before launching a long OCR job.

OCR can struggle with mixed languages, handwriting, tables, columns, stamps, forms, vertical text, and decorative fonts. Treat the TXT output as a draft that needs human review before reuse.

Text output is safer to review than invisible text-layer placement. Searchable PDF OCR should only be offered when visual alignment, page rotation, file size, extraction, and confidence checks are strong.