Convert scanned documents to PDF with Acrobat X

Convert scanned documents to PDF with Acrobat X

Ian Campbell – October 12, 2010

Hello, my name is Ian Campbell and in this video we show you how to convert to PDF a scanned document in Acrobat X.If you have not scanned your document yet, but do have a scanner connected to your computer, you can scan the document directly to PDF from within Acrobat.Click the [Create] button and the [PDF from Scanner] option, then choose a preset which matches the type of original - e.g.

'black & white document' or 'color image'.

If you have a mix of color and monochrome originals, you can opt for the new 'Autodetect Color Mode.' If you have already scanned your documents and saved them as a file on disk, Acrobat X makes it easy to convert to PDF files.

PDFs created by Acrobat can be opened and viewed worldwide by anyone with the free Adobe Reader - on Mac, Windows, Linux and even mobile devices.To convert to PDF, choose [Create PDF] from the splash screen or [Create] and then [PDF from file] from the top left button.Acrobat will initially show files which correspond to the file formats supported for conversion.

To list files from one specific format - e.g.

TIFF - click on the down arrow next to 'Files of Type' and choose that format from the drop down list.I'll choose to convert the TIFF file "NDA Scan 1", which is 169 kB.

As you can see it is a legal document, and I can now save the newly created PDF file to disk.

If I choose [File, Properties] we can see that this document is now a much more efficient 61 kB - approaching a third of the original size of the TIFF yet still good quality.If you are experienced in document scanning, and wish to fine-tune conversion settings, you can easily do so in Acrobat X.Here's a TIFF scan of a complex magazine page, containing colour images.

Click on the [Settings] button to see more conversion options.As in previous versions of Acrobat, you can control image Compression and Color Management, but in Acrobat X we now have a new option which is particularly useful for TIFF images - 'Scan Optimization and OCR'.

Apply Adaptive Compression allows Acrobat to automatically use the best compression method for each area of the page.

Here we can choose various filters to help improve the final image quality.And finally we can ask Acrobat to make text within the scanned image fully searchable.

The original size of this magazine page was over 13 MB but thanks to Acrobat X's advanced image conversion and optimization features we now have a fully searchable PDF that is just 85 kB in size.For more information, watch the related video - Recognizing Text in Scanned Documents.