PDF file size after OCR

[nicholassmall]

I have a 16-page magazine PDF which was OCR'd a long time ago, and not very well; the size of the file is 1,592kB.
When I re-OCR it with FlexiPDF 2025, the quality of the OCR is excellent but the resulting file is 25,783kB! I can reduce the size of the output file only at the cost of reduced quality of the scanned image. If I save the file as OCR text only, the size is 529kB.
Surely it should be possible to reproduce the original scanned image quality, rather than resampling it, to produce a file that is not much more than 1,592kB+529kB.
Nicholas

[Woody44]

When you performed the OCR operation, did you set the output to Editable Text, or did you set it for Searchable Image?

It sounds very much like you scanned an image to another image. I just tried a sample 1-page typed letter. The PDF of the scanned image is 131KB. The file after OCR to Editable Text is 5KB.

[nicholassmall]

> the resulting file is 25,783kB
Searchable Image

> OCR text only, the size is 529kB
Editable text

> the size of the file is 1,592kB
This was the original searchable image.

[SuperTech]

Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. To help us investigate further, could you please:

1. Share the file where you're encountering this problem.

2. If the file contains private/sensitive information, you may send it securely to forum[at]softmaker.com (Please include a link to this forum post for reference).

[nicholassmall]

This is the document in question.