Scanned PDFs and the pictures inside them, searchable.
A photographed label, a scanned form, a product shot, a drawing with no words at all. Opensolr reads every picture inside your PDFs in the language it is written in, describes the ones that carry no text, and indexes every page of every PDF as its own search result. Try it live on 33 public-domain PDFs: newspapers from 1849 to 1919, NASA fact sheets, a 142-page tax guide, old books and pamphlets.
01 — Try it
Every page of every PDF is its own search result.
Each search below lands on the page that answers it, out of 641 pages in 33 PDFs. The result opens the PDF at that page, and every PDF is one result, with the pages that matched listed under its title.
A science book from the 1930s
Dream of Stars, 56 pages written for children. The question lands on the four pages about meteors, grouped under the book.
how big are meteors?A misspelled name
A study guide of American literature. The name is misspelled and the right page is still found, with the correct spelling suggested.
james rusell lowellThe Titanic, in the newspaper
New-York Tribune front pages from April 1912, one page each, found by what they report.
titanic survivors carpathiaTwo missions to Mars
NASA fact sheets on Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Exploration Rovers: the pages that tell how they landed.
mars rover airbagsA 142-page tax guide
IRS Publication 17. Out of 142 pages, the ones that explain the standard deduction.
standard deductionCivil War forts
The Defenses of Washington, 44 pages: the pages about the forts that ringed the capital.
forts around washington civil war02 — What the results look like
One result per PDF, with the pages that matched under it.
Each result carries a Page N link that opens the PDF at that page. Read Page summarises the page, Read Document the whole PDF, every page in order. On the Documents tab every PDF is one result: its title, how many of its pages matched, and its five best pages, the most relevant first. Show more pages lists the rest. Without a query, the pages are listed in order.
Building your own search on the same index? One result per PDF in your own queries: One result per PDF · how the pages are stored: PDFs page by page · the Documents tab: Web and Documents tabs.
03 — The test documents
The test PDFs, crawled by Opensolr.
They sit in one public folder, opensolr.com/ocr-test, and the search above is an ordinary Opensolr Index that crawled it. All of them are in the public domain. Open any of them to compare what is on the page with what the search finds.
| What it is | Pages | |
|---|---|---|
| biological-attack-fact-sheet-2004.pdf | Communicating in a crisis: a fact sheet on biological attacks, 2004. | 6 |
| cdc-vital-signs-wheres-the-sodium-2012.pdf | CDC Vital Signs: where the sodium in our food comes from, 2012. | 4 |
| congressional-record-2024-01-05.pdf | The Congressional Record of January 5, 2024. | 8 |
| crs-report-presidential-history-r44770.pdf | A Congressional Research Service report on the history of the State of the Union address. | 10 |
| doe-illustrated-poster-solar-pv.pdf | An illustrated Department of Energy poster on solar power. | 1 |
| doe-illustrated-poster-wind.pdf | An illustrated Department of Energy poster on wind power. | 1 |
| emancipation-proclamation.pdf | The Emancipation Proclamation, in an old printed edition. | 16 |
| fact-sheet-presidents-budget-fy2022.pdf | A fact sheet on the President’s budget for fiscal year 2022. | 6 |
| federal-register-1944-vol-9.pdf | Pages of the Federal Register, 1944. | 5 |
| irs-form-1040.pdf | IRS Form 1040. | 2 |
| irs-publication-17-tax-guide.pdf | IRS Publication 17, the federal income tax guide for individuals. | 142 |
| issues-in-the-presidential-contest.pdf | The Issues Involved in the Presidential Contest, a pamphlet. | 30 |
| nasa-facts-history-of-jpl.pdf | NASA Facts: the history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. | 5 |
| nasa-mars-exploration-rovers-2003.pdf | NASA fact sheet on the Mars Exploration Rovers, 2003. | 8 |
| nasa-mars-pathfinder.pdf | NASA fact sheet on Mars Pathfinder. | 8 |
| nasa-sts-119-fact-sheet.pdf | NASA fact sheet on Space Shuttle mission STS-119. | 4 |
| nasa-voyager-to-the-outer-planets.pdf | NASA: Voyager to the outer planets. | 7 |
| national-diabetes-fact-sheet.pdf | The National Diabetes Fact Sheet. | 8 |
| new-york-daily-tribune-1849-10-09-page-2.pdf | New-York Daily Tribune, October 9, 1849, page 2. | 1 |
| new-york-tribune-1912-04-15-titanic.pdf | New-York Tribune, April 15, 1912: the Titanic. | 1 |
| new-york-tribune-1912-04-17.pdf | New-York Tribune, April 17, 1912. | 1 |
| new-york-tribune-1919-f-earl-christy.pdf | A New-York Tribune page from 1919. | 1 |
| new-york-weekly-tribune-1864-12-03.pdf | New-York Weekly Tribune, December 3, 1864. | 8 |
| nps-christiansted-national-historic-site.pdf | National Park Service brochure: Christiansted National Historic Site. | 2 |
| nps-hoh-rain-forest-brochure.pdf | National Park Service brochure: the Hoh Rain Forest. | 2 |
| outlines-in-american-literature.pdf | Outlines in American Literature, a study guide. | 24 |
| secret-sessions-of-the-senate.pdf | Secret Sessions of the Senate. | 92 |
| sketch-of-henry-carvill-lewis.pdf | Sketch of Henry Carvill Lewis, a biography. | 28 |
| street-nomenclature-of-washington-city.pdf | Street Nomenclature of Washington City. | 48 |
| the-defenses-of-washington.pdf | The Defenses of Washington, the Civil War forts around the capital. | 44 |
| us-constitution-and-amendments-historical-introduction.pdf | The Constitution of the United States and its amendments, with a historical introduction. | 56 |
| us-infant-mortality-fact-sheet.pdf | The U.S. Infant Mortality Fact Sheet. | 6 |
| wpa-dream-of-stars.pdf | Dream of Stars, compiled by the Writers’ Program of the Work Projects Administration in Pennsylvania. | 56 |
04 — What happens to a PDF
Every page is a document, every picture adds its words.
- Page by page. Every page is its own result, with its own text and language. PDFs page by page
- In the language of the page. The pictures on a page are read in the language of that page. Text in scans and pictures
- Pictures with no text get a meaning. A photo or a drawing is described in a short sentence, so it is found by what it shows. Pictures described by what they show
- Read once. A picture already read, in any PDF, is not read again and not counted again.
- No waiting. A crawled PDF is searchable right away with its own text; the text of its pictures joins its pages moments later.
- By meaning too. Every page is searched by its words and by what it means. Hybrid search
05 — Where it works
Wherever your documents come in. Nothing to switch on.
It works on every index with site search, however you fill it. Every way in, and everything else your index gets: Enterprise Site Search.
- Crawling your site. Every PDF found on your pages, scanned or not. Documents on your site
- Data Ingestion. Every document you send by URL for its text to be read. Files and documents
- Drupal. File attachments sent by the Opensolr Search module. Drupal data ingestion
- WordPress. Media attached to your posts, sent by the Opensolr Search plugin. WordPress data ingestion
- On a crawl, reading the text in pictures uses no AI requests. Describing a picture that has no text does.
- On Data Ingestion and the modules, reading and describing pictures both use AI requests of your plan.
- Anything read before is free, and taking the plain text out of a document never counts.
- The details: What it uses from your plan · API Quota
Put your own PDFs in.
Paste the address of a page that links to your PDFs into the free sandbox, or send them to the Data Ingestion API, and search every page of them, by keyword and by meaning.