OCR a Scanned PDF
A 4-step recipe with Adobe. We can help you get access.
Recipe · 4 steps
OCR a Scanned PDF
with Adobe
Make a scanned PDF searchable with optical character recognition.
- Request a pre-signed upload URI and asset ID for the source PDF, which is then PUT to the returned uploadUri out of band.
- Submit an asynchronous ocrPDF job that makes the uploaded PDF searchable. Returns 201 with an in-progress job status.
- Poll the ocrPDF job until it is no longer in progress, looping back while the status remains "in progress".
- Resolve a pre-signed download URI for the searchable output PDF.
What you'll need to have ready
- accessToken: OAuth 2.0 bearer access token from Adobe IMS.
- ocrLanguage: Language for OCR processing (e.g. en-US).
- ocrType: OCR output type (SEARCHABLE_IMAGE or SEARCHABLE_IMAGE_EXACT).
- jobID: The job identifier taken from the ocrPDF response Location header, used to poll status.
For your developer
Arazzo workflow adobe:ocr-pdf, 4 operations: asset.uploadpresignedurl → pdfoperations.ocr → getJobStatus → getAsset. Specs on APIs.io.