Does it straighten a crooked photo?

Yes, for photos: it finds the edges of the page, crops away the table and straightens the page. If the page cannot be found reliably, the photo is kept whole rather than cropped wrongly. For a scanned PDF at a slight angle, use Deskew PDF.

Will the text still be searchable?

A photo has no text layer to begin with. Run OCR on the cleaned PDF to make it searchable; the cleaner page usually gives better OCR results.

Is the file uploaded?

No. The pages are cleaned where you are working and never sent anywhere.

Clean up a scan

Remove shadows and yellow light from a photographed or scanned document.

Zero-transmission processing
No watermark
Limited daily trial
Unlimited on Pro

Drop your PDFs here

or pick them from your device

Your files are never transmitted. Nothing is uploaded.

Before you start

Photo taken at an angle? Find the page and straighten it crops to the page and squares it up.
Black & white gives the crispest text on forms and letters; Grayscale suits pages with photos.

Optimize PDF tools14 ready

Good to know

Accepts: PDF · JPG · PNG · WebP · HEIC · HEIF
Files at once: Up to 50
Transmission: None — nothing is uploaded.

Chain it

Next, run OCR PDF → Compress PDF on the result back to back — nothing to download in between.

Set up this chain

How to do it

Add your file
Add photos of paper documents or a scanned PDF — several at once become one PDF.
Set it up the way you want
Choose Document to keep color, Grayscale for printing, or Black & white for the smallest file.
Download the result
Download the cleaned PDF. Shadows, yellow light and gray paper are gone and the text is darker.

Questions about Clean up a scan

Does it straighten a crooked photo?: Yes, for photos: it finds the edges of the page, crops away the table and straightens the page. If the page cannot be found reliably, the photo is kept whole rather than cropped wrongly. For a scanned PDF at a slight angle, use Deskew PDF.
Will the text still be searchable?: A photo has no text layer to begin with. Run OCR on the cleaned PDF to make it searchable; the cleaner page usually gives better OCR results.
Is the file uploaded?: No. The pages are cleaned where you are working and never sent anywhere.