Low contrast on scanned pdf

I have a large number of documents that appear to have been scanned on grayscale. The background is white, but the text is gray and difficult to read.
Is there an easy way to increase the contrast of the document in pdf form?
So far, I have been able to print the document, and using the printer settings I can print high contrast, and darken the image, but then I have to re-scan it. This is a waste of paper and time.
I can also save it as a tiff, but it splits into multiple pages, then I have to fix each page and recombine into a pdf. very time consuming!

Thank you for your response.
I tried many of the existing options, the only thing that seems to work is going to tiff, fixing the color, then going back to pdf.
It seems like a long way around, I was just hoping for a better way, or at least a way to automate this.

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Try using Optimization filters which have some filters to remove background (that removes the background shadows and other unwanted artifacts) and sharpen text (that makes your text look crisper and sharper).
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Adjusting contrast in a PDF document with multiple pages

I have seen a question asked several times in various forums and it never gets an answer: how do you adust the contrast and brightness of a scanned PDF if it has several pages? You can't do it in Acrobat, and there are no third-party tools that I've found that work. If you have Photoshop, there is a solution to the problem, which does not require adjusting every page in a document. I use a high-speed duplex hopper-fed scanner to copy books or articles I need for my school work (no, I don't violate copyright by giving them away). There is no way to adjust contrast at the scanner level, so I end up with a 700-page document that is too light or too dark.
1. Use Acrobat to extract all the pages to separate files.
2. Use Adobe Bridge Tools>Rename to serially rename all the pages, so that Photoshop sees them in the right order and they can be reassembled later. There are other free or cheap tools for batch renaming that work equally well.
3. Experiment with your settings on a sample page in Photoshop, until you find one that works. I usually use auto-contrast, or adjust the curves myself.
4. Perform whatever other manipulation you need to on the document page, such as resizing or changing mode to greyscale.
5. Create an action following the same steps.
6. Run a batch process on all the pages in your undone folder, saving them to a done folder. Override the Open and Save settings to avoid dialogue boxes and so on.
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If you have a lot of documents to do that can use more or less the same settings, create a Droplet macro in Photoshop and drag your page folders to it, instead of running a batch.
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Thanks for posting your solution.

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I'm working with a lot of scanned old books. Sometimes I download one from Google Books or another site and want to get rid of the first and last couple of empty pages. The weird thing that happens in Preview is that the new file after extracting the pages I need from the PDF is always HUGE. For example, a scanned PDF of some 160 pages is 6,5 MB. After extracting 150 pages from it, it's 356 MB (!!). The same happens with merging. Merged two PDFs of 15 MB each into one the other day, and the new file was 60 MB. I know that there must be a good reason for that, but it's totally beyond me. It's the same whether I print to PDF or drag and drop. I even tried the Super PDF Utility from the Mac App Store, which enables me to simply delete some pages from the file and the result was the same. So I guess it must be something about the scanned PDFs. But it happens with all scanned PDFs, no matter where I got them.
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Find one the "Jones" can you select the text of the word "Jones"? If not you have a graphic the the PDF/A issue is a red herring.

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While editing a scanned pdf, Acrobat will not recognize the current font & change to very different font. How can I choose the font I want to match the current document?

While editing a scanned pdf, Acrobat will not recognize the current font & change to very different font. How can I choose the font I want to match the current document?

Thanks for answering. The version is XI.0.10. I just did the update yesterday hoping that I could now properly edit a scanned pdf document. Yes, it's happening on most all scanned documents. I followed your steps & found the list of fonts used in the document & then attempted to edit. The same occurs. When I type in a correction, I get an error alert... "the original font (in this case Fd 5805) is not available or can't be used in editing. Acrobat is using the font Minion Pro in its place."
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From: sukritd15 <[email protected]>
To: Deborah Karr <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 5:35 AM
Subject: While editing a scanned pdf, Acrobat will not recognize the current font & change to very different font. How can I choose the font I want to match the current document?
While editing a scanned pdf, Acrobat will not recognize the current font & change to very different font. How can I choose the font I want to match the current document?
created by sukritd15 in Creating, Editing & Exporting PDFs - View the full discussionHi Deborah , I would like to know couple of things before I assist you further.1.Which version of Acrobat are you using ?2.Is it happening for all the scanned PDF' or any particular PDF? You can try these steps,Launch the scanned PDF >right click >Document Properties(from the drop down list) >Fonts(on the dialog box)>From here you will get the fonts used in that PDF . While editing the PDF ,select the text that are editing or typing in with the help of selection tool .After you select the text ,right click on the text and choose "edit text" from the drop down list .From there you will be able to choose the desired font . RegardsSukrit Dhingra If the reply above answers your question, please take a moment to mark this answer as correct by visiting: https://forums.adobe.com/message/7190881#7190881 and clicking ‘Correct’ below the answer Replies to this message go to everyone subscribed to this thread, not directly to the person who posted the message. To post a reply, either reply to this email or visit the message page: Please note that the Adobe Forums do not accept email attachments. If you want to embed an image in your message please visit the thread in the forum and click the camera icon: https://forums.adobe.com/message/7190881#7190881 To unsubscribe from this thread, please visit the message page at , click "Following" at the top right, & "Stop Following" Start a new discussion in Creating, Editing & Exporting PDFs by email or at Adobe Community For more information about maintaining your forum email notifications please go to https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1516624.

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R a i n b o w 7000I work on behalf of HP
Click the “Kudos Thumbs Up" at the bottom of this post to say
“Thanks” for helping!
Click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution!

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Hi @kitesquid,
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I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos Thumbs Up" to say “Thanks” for helping!

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Low contrast on scanned pdf

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