Image to Searchable PDF

Make a scanned image searchable

A photo or screenshot of a document is easy to share, but it is hard to search. The words are part of the picture, so a PDF viewer cannot find a name, invoice number or paragraph inside the file. This Image to Searchable PDF tool keeps your original image as the visible page and adds OCR text to the PDF so viewers can search and select the recognized content. It is useful for single-page scans, receipts, letters, forms, whiteboard captures and screenshots that you want to archive as a PDF.

Everything runs in the browser. Tesseract.js reads the uploaded image with WebAssembly OCR, and pdf-lib creates a new PDF document without contacting a server. The page is sized to the image so the PDF looks like the source file. A small, low-opacity text layer is drawn over the image to make the recognized words available to PDF search and text selection tools. The image, OCR result and final PDF remain in local browser memory until you download the file.

How to get better searchable PDFs

Start with the clearest image you have. Straight scans and crisp screenshots usually work better than angled phone photos. If you are photographing paper, place the document on a flat surface, use even lighting and keep the camera parallel to the page. Crop away desks, borders and shadows before uploading when possible. High contrast between letters and background helps OCR separate characters, especially for small print.

Select the language that matches the document before creating the PDF. The first time a language is used, the browser may download the OCR engine and model, which can make the first job slower; later jobs are usually faster because the files are cached. OCR is not perfect, so search for important terms in the finished PDF and compare them with the original image before using the file for records, contracts, invoices or other high-accuracy workflows.

What the generated PDF contains

The output PDF contains one page with the original image drawn at full size and a selectable text layer generated from OCR. This makes the file convenient for personal archives, note apps, document folders and email attachments where PDF is preferred over an image. The text layer is designed for searchability rather than perfect visual reconstruction, so complex columns, tables or handwriting may not line up exactly. For multi-page jobs, use the PDF OCR or batch OCR tools and combine files with a dedicated PDF editor if needed.