Exploring Photo to PDF in ClaroPDF
We are excited to announce the new Photo to PDF feature in ClaroPDF V1.4. This powerful new feature allows you to turn photos of papers, worksheets, books, etc into PDF files that can be spoken, searched and fully annotated.
The new Photo to PDF feature is accessed from the Open button in ClaroPDF:
Pressing this will allow you to choose an existing photo from your library, or take a new one using your device’s camera. Once you have selected a photo, give your PDF file a name:
Press Save, and ClaroPDF will create an image PDF from the photo that you selected:
With your new image PDF, you can perform simple annotation drawings on it:
As mentioned above, this new PDF is an image PDF, this means it doesn’t yet contain any text. If you try to press play to speak the PDF or tap the search button to search the PDF, a message will pop up informing you that this PDF is an image PDF and needs to be converted:
If you want to convert this image PDF to a text PDF, you can press Yes in this message box, or you can choose Convert PDF from the ClaroPDF Save as menu:
When you select this option, a new message will pop up, informing you of the amount of credits it will cost to convert this PDF file. The cost is one credit per page:
When you select Yes to convert your PDF file, ClaroPDF will send your PDF off to our ClaroPDF Cloud OCR server to convert it. An internet connection is required for the conversion process. A progress bar will appear on the top toolbar to let you know the current progress:
The conversion is done in the background so you are still free to use ClaroPDF whilst the conversion is underway.
When the conversion has finished, you will be prompted for a file name. Enter a name and press Save:
Once you press Save, ClaroPDF will open your new text PDF and you speak it, search it and fully annotated it:
There are also some new settings for this new feature to help you maximise your conversions. The Settings menu in ClaroPDF has now been reorganised and you can find the settings for the conversions under Text PDF Conversion:
The main setting in here is Convert to Text PDF in Cloud. This is switched off by default. If you switch this on, then ClaroPDF will automatically prepare to convert your photos to text PDFs when you select one using Photo to PDF. With this setting switched on, you don’t have to manually Select Save as -> Convert PDF… to convert your PDF to a text PDF.
In the Text PDF Conversion settings, you can also view your current credits and add more if you need some. The first time each user runs ClaroPDF, they will be credited with 50 free credits so they sample the Text PDF Conversion feature.
In the advanced section of Settings, there is a new setting called PDF image detection. This is switched off by default. If you switch this on, then whenever you open an image PDF, ClaroPDF will tell you that it is an image PDF. This is useful if you are getting PDF files from external sources and you don’t know if you can speak/annotate them or not:
