About

Imported from claude-office-skills/skills (pdf-ocr/SKILL.md) via skills.sh. Install upstream with npx skills add claude-office-skills/skills --skill pdf-ocr. Copyright stays with the author (MIT).

PDF OCR Extraction

Name: PDF OCR Extraction
Author: claude-office-skills

Extract text from scanned documents and image-based PDFs using OCR technology.

Overview

This skill helps you:

Extract text from scanned documents
Make image PDFs searchable
Digitize paper documents
Process handwritten text (limited)
Batch process multiple documents

How to Use

Basic OCR

"Extract text from this scanned PDF"
"OCR this document image"
"Make this PDF searchable"

With Options

"Extract text from pages 1-10, English language"
"OCR this document, preserve layout"
"Extract and output as structured data"

Document Types

OCR Quality by Document Type

Document Type	Expected Quality	Tips
Typed documents	⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 95%+	Best results
Printed books	⭐⭐⭐⭐ 90%+	Watch for aging
Forms	⭐⭐⭐⭐ 85%+	Check boxes may need manual
Tables/Data	⭐⭐⭐ 80%+	Structure may need fixing
Handwritten (neat)	⭐⭐ 60-80%	Variable results
Handwritten (cursive)	⭐ 30-60%	Often needs manual review
Mixed content	⭐⭐⭐ 75%+	Depends on complexity

Output Formats

Plain Text Extraction

## OCR Result: [Document Name]

**Pages Processed**: [X]
**Language**: [Detected/Specified]
**Confidence**: [X]%

---

[Extracted text content here]

---

### Notes
- [Any issues or uncertainties]
- [Characters that may be incorrect]

Structured Extraction

## OCR Extraction: [Document Name]

### Document Info
| Field | Value |
|-------|-------|
| Title | [Extracted or inferred] |
| Date | [If found] |
| Author | [If found] |

### Content by Section

#### [Header 1]
[Content under this header]

#### [Header 2]
[Content under this header]

### Tables Found
| Column 1 | Column 2 | Column 3 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| [Data] | [Data] | [Data] |

### Uncertain Text
| Page | Original | Confidence | Possible |
|------|----------|------------|----------|
| 3 | "teh" | 70% | "the" |
| 5 | "l0ve" | 65% | "love" |

Searchable PDF Output

## OCR to Searchable PDF

**Source**: [filename.pdf]
**Output**: [filename_searchable.pdf]

### Processing Summary
| Metric | Value |
|--------|-------|
| Pages | [X] |
| Words extracted | [Y] |
| Average confidence | [Z]% |
| Processing time | [T] seconds |

### Quality Report
- [X] pages with 95%+ confidence
- [Y] pages with 80-94% confidence
- [Z] pages with <80% confidence (review recommended)

### Searchability
✅ Document is now text-searchable
✅ Original images preserved
✅ Text layer added behind images

Pre-Processing Tips

Image Quality Checklist

Before OCR, ensure:

Resolution: 300 DPI minimum (600 for small text)
Contrast: Clear black text on white background
Alignment: Document is straight (not skewed)
Completeness: No cut-off edges
Cleanliness: No stains, marks, or shadows

Common Pre-Processing Steps

Issue	Solution
Low resolution	Upscale image first
Skewed/rotated	Auto-deskew
Poor contrast	Adjust levels/threshold
Noise/specks	Apply noise reduction
Shadows	Flatten lighting
Color document	Convert to grayscale

Language Support

Supported Languages

Excellent: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian
Good: Chinese (Simplified/Traditional), Japanese, Korean
Moderate: Arabic, Hebrew (RTL support), Hindi
Basic: Many others with varying quality

Multi-Language Documents

"OCR this document, detect language automatically"
"Extract text, primary: English, secondary: Chinese"

Handling Specific Content

Forms and Checkboxes

## Form Extraction: [Form Name]

### Field Values
| Field | Value | Confidence |
|-------|-------|------------|
| Name | John Smith | 98% |
| Date | 01/15/2026 | 95% |
| Address | 123 Main St | 92% |

### Checkboxes
| Question | Checked |
|----------|---------|
| Option A | ☑️ Yes |
| Option B | ☐ No |
| Option C | ☑️ Yes |

### Signature
[Signature detected on page X - cannot extract text]

Tables

## Table Extraction

### Table 1 (Page 2)
| Header A | Header B | Header C |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Value 1 | Value 2 | Value 3 |
| Value 4 | Value 5 | Value 6 |

**Table confidence**: 85%
**Note**: Column 3 may have alignment issues

Handwritten Text

## Handwritten Text Extraction

**Legibility Assessment**: [Good/Fair/Poor]
**Recommended**: Manual review

### Extracted Text (Confidence: 65%)
[Extracted text with uncertain words marked]

### Uncertain Words
| Original | Best Guess | Alternatives |
|----------|------------|--------------|
| [image] | "meeting" | "meeting", "meaning" |
| [image] | "Tuesday" | "Tuesday", "Thursday" |

⚠️ **Low confidence extraction - please verify manually**

Batch Processing

Batch OCR Job

## Batch OCR Processing

**Folder**: [Path]
**Total Documents**: [X]
**Status**: [In Progress/Complete]

### Results
| File | Pages | Confidence | Status |
|------|-------|------------|--------|
| doc1.pdf | 5 | 96% | ✅ Complete |
| doc2.pdf | 12 | 88% | ✅ Complete |
| doc3.pdf | 3 | 72% | ⚠️ Review |
| doc4.pdf | 8 | - | ❌ Failed |

### Issues
- doc3.pdf: Pages 2-3 have handwriting
- doc4.pdf: File corrupted

### Summary
- Successful: [X]
- Need Review: [Y]
- Failed: [Z]

Tool Recommendations

Cloud Services

Google Cloud Vision (excellent accuracy)
Amazon Textract (good for forms)
Azure Computer Vision (balanced)
Adobe Acrobat (integrated)

Desktop Software

ABBYY FineReader (best accuracy)
Adobe Acrobat Pro (reliable)
Readiris (good value)
Tesseract (free, open source)

Programming Libraries

pytesseract (Python + Tesseract)
EasyOCR (Python, multi-language)
PaddleOCR (Python, good for Asian languages)

Limitations

Cannot guarantee 100% accuracy
Handwritten text has low accuracy
Very small text may not extract well
Decorative fonts are problematic
Background images reduce quality
Cannot read text in complex graphics
Processing time increases with pages

Use it

Copy one of these into your project. Installing also returns the manifest and these snippets.

yaml

targets:
  - https://api.opensmartroute.ai/api/v1/registry/claude-office-skills-skills-pdf-ocr/manifest   # or paste the manifest below

Manifest

An Open Capability Manifest: the router reads it to know what this does, what it costs and when to pick it.

claude-office-skills-skills-pdf-ocr.ocm.jsonjson

{
  "ocm": "1",
  "id": "claude-office-skills-skills-pdf-ocr",
  "kind": "skill",
  "name": "PDF OCR Extraction",
  "description": "Extract text from scanned PDFs using optical character recognition",
  "publisher": "claude-office-skills",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "capabilities": {
    "domains": [
      "creative"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "skill-md",
      "pdf",
      "ocr",
      "scan",
      "text-extraction",
      "skills-sh"
    ],
    "languages": [
      "en"
    ]
  },
  "quality_prior": 0.6,
  "examples": [
    "Extract text from scanned PDFs using optical character recognition"
  ],
  "primary": false,
  "metadata": {
    "source": {
      "provider": "skills.sh",
      "repository": "https://github.com/claude-office-skills/skills",
      "path": "pdf-ocr/SKILL.md",
      "ref": "HEAD",
      "url": "https://www.skills.sh/claude-office-skills/skills/pdf-ocr-extraction",
      "key": "claude-office-skills/skills/pdf-ocr/SKILL.md"
    },
    "license": "MIT"
  },
  "instructions": "# PDF OCR Extraction\n\nExtract text from scanned documents and image-based PDFs using OCR technology.\n\n## Overview\n\nThis skill helps you:\n- Extract text from scanned documents\n- Make image PDFs searchable\n- Digitize paper documents\n- Process handwritten text (limited)\n- Batch process multiple documents\n\n## How to Use\n\n### Basic OCR\n```\n\"Extract text from this scanned PDF\"\n\"OCR this document image\"\n\"Make this PDF searchable\"\n```\n\n### With Options\n```\n\"Extract text from pages 1-10, English language\"\n\"OCR this document, preserve layout\"\n\"Extract and output as structured data\"\n```\n\n## Document Type",
  "cost": {
    "context_tokens": 1538
  }
}

Fetch it by URL: GET /api/v1/registry/claude-office-skills-skills-pdf-ocr/manifest?version=1.0.0

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