🖨️PDF Scan Effect

About this tool

Open a PDF, choose a look (clean scan, office copier or old photocopy) and fine-tune the tilt, grain and black-and-white setting while watching a preview of page 1. Then save a new PDF where every page has been "scanned". Each page gets its own slight random tilt, just like a real stack of paper through a scanner.

When and how to use a scan effect

Some offices, landlords and portals still ask for a "scanned copy" of a form, even when you filled it in on screen and printing and scanning would add nothing. Designers and film crews need realistic photocopied props, and teachers sometimes want worksheets to look like handouts. This tool renders each page and then applies the things a real scanner or copier does. It adds a small rotation of up to a degree or so, slight offset and softness, grain from the sensor, extra contrast that washes out light greys, an off-white or grey paper tone, and JPEG compression. It can also make everything black and white. The result is rebuilt into a new PDF of the same page size. The office copier preset is the most convincing for everyday documents, and clean scan is subtler. Honest limits: pages become images, so the text is no longer selectable or searchable. Run PDF OCR afterwards if you need that, and expect a larger file than the original digital PDF. This changes how a document looks, not what it is. Never use it to mislead anyone about a document's origin, to make an altered document look official, or to pass off a signature. PDF to grayscale, the PDF compressor and the document scanner are related.

Frequently asked questions