How to Deskew PDF Pages? [2024 Full Guide]

If your scanned documents are skewed, they can significantly affect the quality of the OCR conversion. To tackle this issue, professionals make use of deskew PDF tools to straighten the pages for better text recognition. Deskewing scanned documents not only avoids the misinterpretation of text due to slants but also aids in more accurate data extraction.

Scanned PDF pages can get skewed when not placed perfectly in the scanner bed. Moreover, if you are making scanned documents with mobile scanning apps, there are more chances of PDFs being skewed. We will introduce some of the best deskew PDF tools to provide you with the most appropriate solution to this scanned PDF problem.

What is a Skewed PDF?

A skewed PDF contains pages not aligned horizontally or vertically to perfection. The pages in such PDFs are slanted or tilted, giving a disorganized look to the document. Skewing in a PDF document occurs when the pages are not scanned or created in a perfectly straight orientation. Additionally, scanned documents created with mobile scanners can be skewed if the camera is not perfectly stable.

Sometimes, digitally created PDFs may contain skewed pages if the software fails to maintain perfect alignment. Such skewed PDFs make the document look unprofessional and difficult to read. In addition, they can affect the accuracy of OCR conversion when converting scanned PDFs into editable formats. Keeping in view the negative aspects of these PDFs, there is a need to straighten PDF pages before using them in professional settings.

Way 1. How to Deskew PDF with UPDF?

UPDF provides solutions to every PDF-related problem, including reading, annotating, converting, OCR, AI, etc. Even though it doesn't have the Deskew feature currently, UPDF OCR can still recognize text accurately. Moreover, its development team is working on it and will release it soon. Try the accurate OCR feature yourself by downloading it now:

If you are tired of disorganized PDF pages while scanning them with mobile scanners, UPDF has a perfect solution for you. All you need to do is make use of its OCR conversion feature to make life easier for yourself.

Additionally, users can also select the language of the scanned file to facilitate text recognition. You also have the option to apply recognition to certain page ranges you want.

Step 1. Access the Recognize Text Using the OCR Feature

As discussed in the above sections, skewed pages present a lot of problems while dealing with scanned PDFs. UPDF provides the best solution to this problem with its OCR feature. You can recognize text accurately with the help of the following simple steps.

First, you need to open the scanned PDFs containing skewed pages on UPDF to straighten them. Once the skewed PDF is successfully opened, click the "Recognize Text Using OCR" icon to access the pop-up window with OCR conversion settings.

Step 2: Optimize the Settings

After reaching OCR conversion settings, you can play around with the formatting settings for the output PDF. Select the "Text and Pictures only" option from the layout dropdown menu to optimize the settings for deskewing the PDF pages. Additionally, you can further modify the layout settings by clicking on the "Gear" icon beside this dropdown menu.

Step 3: Perform OCR

You also have to select the "Document Language" to facilitate data extraction. Moreover, you can also insert the "Page Range" to straighten only a specific number of pages.

Conclusively, select "Perform OCR" to save the PDF on your device. You will find that the text in the output document is in straight lines.

Moreover, if you want to edit the scanned document, go to "Edit PDF" and now you can easily customize the text font, text color, image, etc.

To learn more about how to ocr a pdf, watch the below video guide.

Way 2. How to Straighten PDF Pages with Adobe Acrobat?

Adobe Acrobat allows users to deskew PDF pages with diverse "Enhance Scanned Document" options. All you have to do is access the "Scan & OCR" feature of this tool to straighten PDF pages with minimal effort. Furthermore, you also get to modify background removal, de-screen, and sharpen text with this feature.

In addition to that, Adobe Acrobat straightens pages without losing their layout settings. Users also have the option to apply these settings to a customized range of pages. With the image optimization options, you can also adjust the image quality of the straightened pages. Let's see how you can perform this deskewing operation using Adobe Acrobat.

Step 1: To start the deskewing process, launch Adobe Acrobat on your device and hit the "See All Tool" buttons to access all tools in Adobe Acrobat. Here, click on the "Scan & OCR" tool and upload your skewed PDF to get the process started.

Step 2: Afterward, hit the "Enhance" dropdown menu and choose the "Scanned Document" option to access a new toolbar.

Step 3. On this toolbar, click the "Settings" icon to access the "Enhance Scanned PDF" settings window.

Step 4: Click the "Edit" button in the "Filters" section to reach various PDF optimization options. You need to click the "Deskew" dropdown menu and press the "On" button to straighten PDF pages. Then, save all these settings by clicking the "OK" button.

Step 5. Finally, click the "Enhance" option on the toolbar at the top of your screen to get a deskewed PDF.

How to Deskew PDF Online?

If you want to deskew PDFs online, Sejda provides the best option to undertake this operation. This tool has the ability to automatically straighten the scanned PDFs free of cost within a few seconds. All you need to do is upload the PDF on its server and let the tool perform its magic. Moreover, your files stay private, as this tool deletes the file 2 hours after it is uploaded.

However, this free deskew PDF tool has some limitations in functionality. You can only upload up to 200 pages or 100 MB scanned PDFs on its server to deskew them. Additionally, you can only perform 3 such tasks per hour with the help of Sejda. Let's see how to deskew PDF pages with the help of Sejda:

Step 1: Open the Sejda website on your browser to kick start the process of deskewing the PDFs. Now, hover over the "All Tools" tab present at the top of the page and scroll down to click on the "Deskew" option in the "Scans" section.

Step 2: After clicking on the option, you will reach a new window where you can upload the skewed scanned documents for conversion. Here, click on the "Upload PDF Files" button and browse the desired documents to upload them.

Step 3: Once the PDF is uploaded, hit the "More Option" button to select the page range for this conversion. Finally, click on the Deskew PDF to reach the download window. Here, hit the Download icon to save the deskewed PDF on your device.

Final Words

Now that you have a basic understanding of how to deskew PDFs, you can apply this knowledge to align your scanned documents. All the tools discussed in this article are good enough to undertake this PDF page straightening operation. However, if you are looking for the best PDF solution to solve all your problems, download UPDF now to make the process easier.