Seeking suggestions for handling PDF files on Mac and iPhone

By MarĂ­a, 24 March, 2020

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

Hello again,
now, that I must work at home, I need to read a lot of pdf files created by scanning documents. Unfortunately, with my Mac I cannot do it, because it says always ando only "image, image, image", so do you know if Apple has invented something to read them?, otherwise, I think that it would be an important thing to say to Apple Accessibility, and do you know any program or any way to read them and if it would be possibile, to convert them in a text file?.
Many thanks in advance:
MarĂ­a

Options

Comments

By Daniel Angus MacDonald on Thursday, April 2, 2020 - 20:17

Abbyy Finereader is one of the options for reading PDF on the mac, if not the only option.
Daniell

By Laura Tosetto on Thursday, April 2, 2020 - 20:17

I have never tried FineReader myself, but I heard it is very good. However, it is also very expensive (even though there is a free trial period I think). If you want something cheaper and simpler you can try the SensusAccess website. It has limitations on the size of files you can upload, but in my opinion it does the job quite well. You can also convert an inaccessible PDF directly to a text format. Just select a file from your device and upload it, select the conversion you want to perform, and the result will be sent you via email. The website is as follows: www.sensusaccess.com
Hope this helps!

By RDK on Thursday, April 2, 2020 - 20:17

Hi, DEVONthink have a feature, OCR which can convert files to searchable format. But OCR feature is available on PRO version which cost 200 $.

By MarĂ­a on Thursday, April 2, 2020 - 20:17

First at all, many thanks for your answers.
what about this Devonthink?, I never hear about it before.
Before making a decision, I would like to know what are the differences between Fine Reader and this Devonthink, as it cost much more, I suppose that there will be differences, won't be?.
And please, could you give me the site in which I can see something about this program, and eventually contact them to ask for information?.
As I want to do is reading pdf files, and above all, to be able to convert them in rtf, wrod or txt format, I mean, in a readable format. I don't need to scan anything only to read and v convert files.
Manh thanks agan.
MarĂ­a

By Tangela on Thursday, April 2, 2020 - 20:17

I highly recommend Voice Dream Scanner in conjunction with Voice dream reader for this task. Easily some of the best OCR and importing with a bunch of high quality voices to read the scans with. For the price, its easily the best solution. You'll be looking at about $6.00 for scanner, and around $10.00 for reader. If you really need to save the money, you can use scanner without reader, but I feel that they work best together, and will still be cheaper than many other apps and of equal or better quality.