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feat: add --mode strip to remove the OCR text layer without rasterizing

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Adds a processing mode that removes the invisible (render mode 3) OCR text
layer in place. Unlike `--ocr-engine none --force-ocr`, it does not
rasterize the page, so images and visible content are preserved unchanged
and the output is smaller rather than larger. Options that require
rasterization or OCR (--deskew, --clean, --sidecar, etc.) are rejected.

Only invisible text is removed; text drawn as visible glyphs under an
opaque image (some OCR engines, and OCRmyPDF v2.2 and earlier) cannot be
removed this way, as documented.

Closes #1435.
This commit is contained in:
James R. Barlow
2026-06-11 12:34:03 -07:00
parent 8a8d515933
commit 0d4c3bcdcf
8 changed files with 152 additions and 11 deletions
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docs/cookbook.md
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@@ -249,19 +249,34 @@ case. Use `--tesseract-non-ocr-timeout` to control the timeout for
non-OCR operations, if needed.
:::
### Remove all text or OCR from my PDF
### Remove the OCR text layer from my PDF
This is getting ridiculous, but OCRmyPDF can complete strip all textual
information from a PDF and reconstruct it as a \"bag of images\" PDF.
To remove the invisible OCR text layer while keeping the original pages
exactly as they are -- no rasterizing, no change to images or visible
content, and a smaller output file -- use `--mode strip`:
```bash
ocrmypdf --mode strip input.pdf output.pdf
```
Why would you want to do this? Perhaps you have a PDF where OCR failed to
produce useful results and you simply want to get rid of it.
`--mode strip` removes only text drawn as *invisible* (PDF text render
mode 3), which is how OCRmyPDF and most OCR tools add a searchable layer
over a scanned page. Some OCR products -- and OCRmyPDF v2.2 and earlier --
instead draw *visible* text and paint an opaque image on top of it. That
text is part of the visible page, so `--mode strip` cannot remove it
without altering the page's appearance.
To strip *all* text, including such visible text, rasterize the whole page
into a \"bag of images\" PDF instead (this rebuilds every page as an image,
so the file usually grows and vector content is lost):
```bash
ocrmypdf --ocr-engine none --force-ocr input.pdf output.pdf
```
Why would you want to do this? Perhaps you have a PDF where OCR fails to
produce useful results, and just want to get rid of all OCR information.
This command also removes OCR generated by third party tools.
### Optimize images without performing OCR
You can also optimize all images without performing any OCR:
docs/releasenotes/version17.md
+7
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@@ -80,6 +80,13 @@
interpreted "lots of diacritics - possibly poor OCR" hint, but now also emits
Tesseract's raw message at debug verbosity (``-v 1``) so the original wording
is available for diagnosis. {issue}`1566`
- Added ``--mode strip``, which removes the invisible OCR text layer from a PDF
in place. Unlike ``--ocr-engine none --force-ocr``, it does not rasterize the
page, so images and visible content are preserved unchanged and the output is
smaller rather than larger. Only text drawn as invisible (PDF text render mode
3) is removed; some OCR engines -- and OCRmyPDF v2.2 and earlier -- express
text as visible glyphs covered by an opaque image, and that text cannot be
removed this way. {issue}`1435`
## v17.5.0