Even though they may look the same on the surface, PDF files are different. That is, they can be created in different ways. One way to create a PDF is by converting an electronically generated document that was created by using programs such as Word or Excel.
Another way is by scanning text or images from paper documents.
Creating scanned PDF files, or image PDFs (so-called because the resulting PDF content is only an image of the document) is, by far, the number one solution for transferring paper files into digital ones.
When you scan a document into the PDF format, you will need a quality scan to PDF document software tool. Fortunately, Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro is just one of many PDF scanning software tools that can get your documents into a digital format quickly.
To Create an Image PDF file using Adobe Acrobat 11 Pro:
- Set your paper document on the scanner face down. Then with Acrobat opened, follow the steps below:
- 1Click on the Create button on the toolbar.
- 2Select PDF from Scanner.
- 3Specify the type of document scan you are performing from the list of options. Acrobat will automatically start scanning your document.
- Note: You can also adjust your scanner settings beforehand under the Configure Presets… option if they have not yet been set up or need adjusting. Click on OK once everything is set. Then start again from step 1.
- 4In the dialog that pops up, confirm whether or not you need to Scan more pages or if the Scan is Complete.
- 5After you have scanned in all the pages needed, simply save your file to your computer as usual.
Note that a scanned document is only a picture of the text or image. As such, you will not be able to perform a word search on it. To do so, you will need to run it through an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine found in most OCR enabled PDF converters.