Scanned PDFs are one of the hardest document types to navigate.
You can scroll through pages, but there is often no real text layer, no structured headings, and no built-in table of contents. That means normal bookmark tools fail quickly.
Why Scanned PDFs Need OCR First
For image-based PDFs, chapter titles are not machine-readable until OCR is applied.
Without OCR, automation cannot reliably identify:
- section titles,
- heading levels,
- chapter boundaries.
A Practical OCR + Bookmark Flow
Use this process for old books, paper scans, and archive documents:
- Upload the scanned PDF.
- Run OCR-enabled analysis.
- Generate a draft bookmark tree from recognized headings.
- Manually adjust only the incorrect nodes.
- Export the final PDF with bookmarks.
This reduces most work to review and correction, instead of building everything from zero.
Accuracy Tips for Better Bookmark Detection
To get cleaner results:
- Use scans with higher DPI when possible.
- Avoid heavily skewed or cropped pages.
- Keep chapter title patterns consistent in the source.
- After generation, run one pass of offset correction if all nodes are shifted.
When This Is Especially Valuable
OCR bookmark generation is ideal for:
- digital archive teams,
- legal and compliance document conversion,
- academic material migration,
- multilingual historical documents.
Final Takeaway
If your files are scanned and still need professional navigation, OCR-assisted bookmark generation is the fastest path from unreadable PDF to usable document.