Fix Adobe Acrobat OCR Text Spacing Issues on Mac
Question details
Users notice that the character spacing of selectable text after performing OCR in Adobe Acrobat differs from the visible scanned text.
- Product
- Adobe Acrobat Pro
- Device & OS
- macOS
- Scenario
- Selecting recognized text in a scanned PDF document after running the OCR process on a Mac.
- Observed behavior
- The highlight or selection box of the OCR-recognized text shows different character spacing compared to the underlying scanned image, making it appear misaligned or incorrect.
Verify that the actual recognized text is accurate by copying and pasting it into a plain text editor before assuming the OCR process failed.
Understand and verify the hidden OCR text layer
Confirm that the OCR engine correctly recognized the characters despite the visual mismatch in text selection spacing.
When Adobe Acrobat performs OCR, it creates an invisible layer of text over the scanned image. The spacing differences occur because macOS and Windows use different default invisible fonts to construct this layer.
Because Acrobat selects this hidden text layer rather than the scanned image, the highlighted spacing may appear misaligned. This is normal behavior and does not necessarily indicate an error in the OCR processing.
Use the text selection tool in Adobe Acrobat to highlight the area where the spacing looks incorrect.
Press Cmd+C on your Mac keyboard to copy the highlighted invisible text layer to your clipboard.
Open a plain text editor like TextEdit, press Cmd+V, and check if the characters themselves are accurate. If the spelling is correct, the OCR was successful.
Extract Text from Scanned PDFs Accurately with WPS PDF
If you are frustrated by awkward text selections and hidden layer spacing in your current PDF editor, try WPS Office. The built-in WPS PDF tool offers a highly accurate OCR engine that extracts text seamlessly from scanned documents and images, keeping your workflow efficient on both Mac and Windows.
- 1. Open your scanned PDF: Launch WPS Office and open your scanned PDF document using the WPS PDF viewer.
- 2. Access the OCR tool: Navigate to the 'Tools' tab on the top ribbon and click on the 'OCR' button.
- 3. Extract or convert text: Choose to either extract the text directly to your screen or convert the entire scanned PDF into an editable Word document for perfect alignment and zero hidden layer issues.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the OCR text spacing look different on Mac compared to Windows?
macOS and Windows use different default invisible fonts to render the hidden text layer generated by the OCR process. This causes the text selection highlights to align differently on each operating system.
Can I fix the visual spacing of the hidden OCR layer in Adobe Acrobat?
Because the hidden layer is automatically generated by the OCR engine using system default invisible fonts, you cannot manually adjust its visual character spacing. The focus should be on the accuracy of the extracted characters.
Does incorrect text spacing mean my OCR failed?
No, visual misalignment of the selection box does not mean the OCR failed. If you copy the selected area and paste it into a text editor, you will usually find that the recognized characters and spelling are perfectly accurate.
