AI offers this insight...
"The issue you're experiencing—jumbled, out-of-order words after OCR—is a common problem when using OCR software on multi-column scanned PDF documents, like newspapers.
Why this happens:
Most basic OCR tools, including those in NCH Pico PDF, read the document image in a simple left-to-right, top-to-bottom sequence, without accounting for columns. As a result, text is often combined from different columns or arranged in a nonsensical order.
This limitation is particularly noticeable with complex layouts such as newspapers that feature multiple columns, non-uniform spacing, and varied font sizes.
Can PicoPDF handle multi-column OCR?
There is no evidence in the official documentation or tutorials that PicoPDF's OCR can correctly parse and maintain the column structure of complex, multi-column scanned PDFs. Instead, its OCR is optimized for relatively straightforward, single-column documents.
Even leading OCR programs can struggle with multi-column layouts unless they have advanced layout recognition or manual column selection tools.
What you can do:
Check image quality: Ensure your scan is high resolution and as clear as possible, as poor quality images further reduce OCR accuracy.
Manually correct text: After running OCR, you can try to manually rearrange and edit the text within PicoPDF, but this may be time-consuming for large documents.
Print the PDF, then cut out columns are feed them individually to Pico.
Contact support: If you believe PicoPDF should handle your document better, you can reach NCH's technical support for further help or to suggest improvements.
Summary:
PicoPDF's OCR can convert image-based PDFs to text, but it cannot reliably interpret and preserve multiple columns found in complex documents like newspapers. This is almost certainly why your output is jumbled. For better results with multi-column layouts, consider using OCR tools specifically designed for such documents."