Tutorial 3: Rescue a scanned
PDF
Goal: turn a scanned, image-only PDF (or a photo of
a page) into real, editable, searchable text — free, on your own
machine, with nothing uploaded.
Background: the one rule
Import / Convert Document routes every file through
free, local services first: the built-in MarkItDown
converter for born-digital files, then free on-device Tesseract
OCR for scans. There is no cloud step, no account, and no cost.
QUILL always asks before running OCR, and never opens an empty result
silently.
1. One-time setup:
install the OCR engine
- Tools > Reading & Dictation > Install Local OCR
Engine (Tesseract)...
- QUILL states the size (about 48 MB) and exactly what will happen,
then downloads the official installer from QUILL's own verified release
and checks it byte-for-byte.
- The installer opens visibly — complete it like any
normal install. (If Tesseract is already on your machine, or installed
via Homebrew on a Mac, skip this: QUILL finds it automatically.)
2. Convert the document
- File > Import > Import / Convert Document
(OCR)... and pick your PDF.
- If the PDF actually has a text layer, it opens instantly as editable
text — done, and QUILL announces "Nothing was uploaded."
- If it is a scan, QUILL says so honestly: "QUILL could not find
readable text in this document. It looks scanned or image-based. Run
free on-device OCR? This stays on your computer and does not upload
anything."
- Choose Yes. QUILL recognizes each page
("Recognizing page 3 of 12...") and opens the result as a new document,
with page boundaries kept as searchable
<!-- Page N --> markers.
Photos work too: point the same command at a .png or
.jpg of a page and it goes straight to OCR.
3. Judge the result
QUILL reports recognition confidence out of 100.
Above ~80 on a clean scan, expect near-perfect text. When QUILL warns
that confidence is low:
- Re-scan straighter/darker if you can — quality in, quality out.
- Read the result critically; OCR errors cluster around numbers,
names, and poor contrast regions.
- Run a spell check (
palette > spell) — OCR errors
light up fast.
4. Finish the job
- Save as Markdown or plain text, or File > Export
to Word.
- Run GLOW Audit Current Document to catch structural
issues in the recovered text (see tutorial 6).
- For a recurring scan pile, aim a watch folder at
your scanner's output directory.
Where this is honest
Tools > Reading & Dictation > OCR and Conversion
Services... describes every service in plain language — what it
does, what it costs (nothing), what stays local (everything) — and shows
the engine's install status. A consent-gated cloud tier for the hardest
documents is planned; the free local tiers always run first.
Next: Turn a
document into an audiobook.