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13 February 2008
Alternative to Adobe Acrobat?→[More:] Is there some kind of (free) software I can use to scan multiple-page documents into a PDF? Anyone have experience with any programs? (WinXP + Epson scanner, by the way.)
I would scan them to TIFF with the software that comes with Windows (Scanner and Camera Wizard?), or whatever software Epson bundles with the scanner. Then create PDFs with pdf995.
I've had good experiences with PDFCreator, which is free (free like beer, maybe speech). It installs itself as a "printer", so anything that can print can send it files to be turned in to PDF.
Depending on the nature of your documents, you may need separate software that does OCR. That is software looks at a picture of text (what a scanner makes) and turns it into editable text like MS Word makes. The full paid versions of Acrobat include an OCR feature, so be mindful not to conflate "make pdf" with "do ocr".