OCRmyPDF

OCRmyPDF is a high-performance, open-source command-line tool designed to integrate seamlessly into modern document pipelines. Built on top of industry-standard libraries like Tesseract OCR, Ghostscript, and Unpaper, it solves the fundamental problem of 'dead' PDF images by injecting a searchable text layer. In the 2026 landscape, it serves as a critical infrastructure component for local-first AI architectures, enabling private, on-premise document ingestion for RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) systems without the data sovereignty risks of cloud-based APIs. The tool employs sophisticated image preprocessing to deskew, despeckle, and rotate pages before OCR, ensuring maximum character recognition accuracy even with poor scan quality. It also focuses heavily on document integrity, supporting PDF/A-1b, 2b, and 3b for long-term digital preservation. By utilizing the pikepdf library, it ensures that original PDF structures, bookmarks, and metadata are preserved throughout the conversion process. Its modular Python architecture and native Docker support make it the gold standard for developers automating massive archival workloads or building privacy-centric document management systems.