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Elephas reads the text in your scanned PDFs and images with OCR (optical character recognition) that runs on your computer. Add a scan or a screenshot like any other file, and you can ask about it and click through to the exact page.

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Before you start

  • Text recognition must be installed. It downloads with Elephas’s other components on first run, as Text recognition for scanned pages. Check it in Settings › Downloads. See manage downloads.
  • English text is supported. Text recognition reads English. Scans in other languages may come out garbled or empty.
  • Supported scans: PDF, PNG, JPEG and TIFF. See supported file types.

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Steps

1

Check text recognition is installed

Open Settings › Downloads. Text recognition for scanned pages should say Downloaded. If it says Missing, click Download next to it.
2

Add your scans

Open a Brain and drag your scanned PDFs or images onto the page, or click Add › Files…. See add files and folders.
3

Wait for them to be ready

Scans take longer than ordinary files, because each page is turned into an image and read. The row shows Extracting… while this happens.
4

Ask and check the page

Ask your question. Citations to a scan point to its page. Click one to see the passage.

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How it works

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OCR runs on your computer

Text recognition is a small component that runs on your Mac or PC. Your scans are never uploaded to be read. Indexing happens on your computer. Always. After that, asking about a scan works like any other document: see what data is sent to AI.

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What gets read, and when

Elephas reads up to the first 500 scanned pages of a document. Pages after that are not read. Lines that OCR is not confident about are left out rather than guessed. If some pages had no readable text, the row says so quietly, for example 3 pages have no readable text. The rest of the document still works.

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Limits

  • Images up to 50 MB and 50 million pixels.
  • Up to 500 scanned pages per document.
  • Text in pictures on PowerPoint slides is not read yet.

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Tips for better results

  • Scan at 300 DPI or more. Elephas reads pages at 300 DPI. A low-resolution scan loses detail that cannot be recovered.
  • Keep pages straight and flat. Skewed, curled or rotated pages read poorly. Use your scanner app’s auto-straighten if it has one.
  • Black text on a plain background works best. Avoid colored paper, heavy shadows and photos taken at an angle.
  • Crop to the page. Remove dark borders and desk edges.
  • Prefer the original file. If you have the digital Word or PDF original, add that instead. Its text is exact.
  • Check a citation. After you ask, open a cited page to confirm the text was read correctly before you rely on it.

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Troubleshooting

The text recognition component is missing or damaged. Open Settings › Downloads, click Download next to Text recognition for scanned pages, then click Retry on the file. See manage downloads.
OCR could not find any text it was confident about. The scan may be too faint, too small or not in English. Rescan at a higher resolution, then remove the file and add it again. See file import errors.
Check whether the row says some pages have no readable text, and whether the document is longer than 500 scanned pages. Messy handwriting, stamps and tables in scans are often not read reliably.

Supported file types

Manage downloads

Add files and folders

Citations and sources