Design Center article

Just about anything—hard copy or electronic—can be used to create an Adobe® PDF document. If you can fit it into your scanner or copy it to the Microsoft® Windows or Mac OS clipboard, you can convert it into a PDF file. For example, you can scan worksheet pages to distribute to a class electronically, scan a signed contract to e-mail to a client, or even scan hand-drawn artwork to share with others. If you need to save or distribute an image from the screen, you can copy it to the clipboard and then create a PDF file.

Created a PDF file from a scanned page

To scan a page and save it as a PDF document:

1. Set up the scanner. Make sure your scanner is properly connected to your computer, and that you’ve installed the scanning software provided by the scanner manufacturer. Acrobat uses the scanning interface that comes with your scanner.
2. Select your scanner in Acrobat. Start Acrobat. Choose File > Create PDF > From Scanner, or click the Create PDF button in the taskbar and choose From Scanner. Acrobat opens the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box. Select your scanner.

Figure 1: Select your scanner in the Create PDF From Scanner dialog box.

3. Specify basic scanning settings. From the Scan menu, choose Front Sides or Both Sides; this setting is most relevant if your scanner has a feeder. If a PDF document is open in Acrobat, choose whether to create a new document or to append the scanned pages to the current document. If you want to scan pages as searchable text, select Recognize Text Using OCR. OCR, or optical character recognition, is a technology that recognizes individual letters as you scan, instead of interpreting the entire page as an image.

Figure 2: Specify basic scanning settings.

4. Specify image settings. Click Image Settings. Specify compression and filtering options. The default settings create good-quality pages with compact file sizes. However, you may want to change the settings to improve image quality, reduce file sizes, or to troubleshoot scanning problems. To reduce the file size, move the slider to the left; to improve the image quality, move the slider to the right.
   
   You can choose Adaptive or JPEG compression options for color and grayscale pages, and JBIG2, Adapative, or CCITT Group 4 for monochrome pages. Deskew rotates a skewed page so that it appears to be vertical, rather than at an angle. Background Removal, Edge Shadow Removal, Despeckles, Descreen, and Halo Removal remove marks, smudges, dark streaks, unwanted dot patterns, and excess color from the pages. For information about the compression and filtering options, see Acrobat Help.

Figure 3: In the Image Settings dialog box, specify the settings to determine image quality and file size.

5. Scan the pages. Click Scan. The dialog box for your scanner’s software opens. Specify the appropriate settings, which vary for different scanners. After the page has been scanned, click Next to scan more pages; click Done when all the pages have been scanned. If you’re creating a new PDF document, name it. If you’re appending the pages to an existing PDF document, save the file.

Figure 4: A PDF file created from a scanned image.

Create a PDF file from an image on the clipboard

To create a PDF file from an image copied to the clipboard:

1. Copy the image. Open the website or document that contains the image you want to copy. Select the image, and choose Edit > Copy. The application copies the image to the operating system’s clipboard.

Note: Acrobat can create a PDF file from an image on the clipboard, but not from editable text.

 

Figure 5: Copy an image from a website or other document.

2. Create the PDF file. In Acrobat, choose Edit > Create PDF > From Clipboard Image. Acrobat creates a new PDF document of the image.

Figure 6: Choose Edit > Create PDF > From Clipboard Image.

3. Save the file.

Figure 7: A PDF file created from an image copied to the clipboard.

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