What is the difference between scanning to JPEG and scanning to PDF?

[lsquare]

I have some documents that I have to scan. I bought the Canon Canoscan 9000F a couple of years ago. I never even opened it until yesterday. I also have a copy of Adobe Acrobat X that came with my other document scanner. So what is the difference between scanning to JPEG and scanning to PDF? I am leaning on scanning to JPEG because I want to also insert some of these documents into Microsoft OneNote. If I scan straight to PDF, then I'm not sure how to extract the document from the PDF and then insert it into OneNote later.

I plan to scan at 300dpi and if I scan to JPEG, at least I can import it into both Acrobat X and OneNote and use the programs to OCR the JPEGs. I can do that right? I think the OCR quality and speed will be better either Acrobat X or OneNote over ScanGear and MP Navigator EX (Canon's software). I think scanning to JPEG will take up more time, but might make my workflow easier given what I plan to do.

Any comments on how I should proceed with this?

 

[pcgeek11]

If you scan it as a jpeg it will be a picture of a document. If you scan it to a pdf document you will be able to edit it later.

 

[corkyg]

Basically, picture vs. document. Your choice.

 

[Kaido]

http://i.imgur.com/pKxZCiZ.jpg

 

[dave_the_nerd]

A PDF is just a container format. By default, scanning to a PDF will just give you a PDF with the JPEG embedded in it. Your scanner software will probably do that much without Acrobat being involved at all.

Acrobat Pro is one of several programs which will also let you do OCR, which recognizes the text in the scanned document (which is just a picture) and will let you extract that to, say, Word or something.

There's nothing wrong with scanning as a JPEG - you can always import that into Acrobat later. But make sure you're scanning at a high-enought resolution that text is legible. Some scanners - mine included - default to a lower resolution - 150-200 dpi - when JPEG is selected because it assumed you're scanning a photo. 300 dpi or better for text, please. Preferably 600. And turn down the JPEG compression.

But that may not be what you want. If, say, formatting is important. (Legal documents, bills, etc., where it needs to look like the original.)

Acrobat can also "hide" the recognized text in the PDF so you can do keyword searches, etc., without losing the original formatting/appearance of the scanned document. (Awesome feature in conjunction with document management software.)

In Acrobat, Document -> Optimize Scanned PDF, or File->Save As... and go from there.