Improve the Quality of a Scanned PDF
Scans from phones, copiers and old office scanners are often too dark, grey or speckled. Enhance PDF adjusts the page images – light, contrast, sharpness and noise – and shows the result in a live preview before you download it.
How to Improve a Scanned PDF
- Open Enhance PDF Add your scan. The first page appears in the preview, which updates as you change settings.
- Start with a preset "Text Enhancement" suits typed documents; "Auto Enhance" corrects light and contrast automatically.
- Fine-tune Adjust Brightness, Contrast, Sharpness and Noise Reduction until the text is easy to read. Check a few pages with the page arrows.
- Download Choose PDF or Images (ZIP), optionally a page range, and click "Enhance PDF".
What You Can Improve
Dark or grey pages
Brightness, Exposure and Whites lift a grey background so it looks like paper again.
Weak text
Contrast and Blacks make text darker. For very light scans, see Restore a Faded PDF.
Speckles and grain
Noise Reduction smooths specks from copiers and phone cameras before sharpening.
Phone photos of documents
Auto Enhance and the "Text Enhancement" preset even out uneven lighting in photographed pages.
Pages become images
Every page is saved as a 200 DPI image with its original page size. Text can no longer be selected, so keep your original file.
Your file stays on your device
Enhance PDF works in your browser; your document is not uploaded to our server.
Good to Know
- Enhancement cannot add detail that is missing from the scan. If text is unreadable in the original, scan it again at 300 DPI.
- Signed or certified documents: any change invalidates a digital signature, and some offices only accept the original scan.
Improving Scanned PDFs – Frequently Asked Questions
Which settings work best for typed documents?
Start with the "Text Enhancement" preset, then adjust Contrast and Sharpness. Avoid very high sharpness – it creates halos around letters.
Can I enhance only some pages?
Yes. Enter a page range such as 1-3,7 before you download; only those pages are processed and included.
Will the text still be searchable?
No. Each page is saved as an image. To make the result searchable, run OCR PDF on the enhanced file.
Does the file get bigger?
Scans usually stay in a similar range. If the result is too large, compress it with Compress PDF.
Is my file uploaded to a server?
No. Enhance PDF works in your browser, so the file never leaves your device.
Is it free?
Yes – no sign-up, no watermark and no limit on the number of files.
Make Your Scan Easier to Read
Brighten, sharpen and clean up scanned pages in your browser.
Enhance Scanned PDF