How do i convert four separate images to a searchable pdf? OCR?

Questions & Suggestions
1

How do i convert four separate images to a searchable pdf? OCR?

Assume I have a recipe in a cookbook, that I have scanned

a: it runs to say four pages
b: each page is a separate jpg file
c: some of the pages have pics of the food cooking etc

Ideally the macro would produce a four page SEARCHABLE pdf with the pictures
or
a Pages document with 4 pages with the pictures

Q1: Any ideas?

Q2: I can find only two OCR actions in KM, and do not see how you specify which OCR engine you want to use? Tesseract, Apple, KM ?

Q3: If I cannot do it in KM, what other software should I consider?
I am running MACOS Sequoia with latest KM v11.0.3.

Q4: Using OCR, is the formatting or fonts etc preserved, or is it reduced to say a string of text in Courier New or is markdown an option?

2

Using Apple's OCR, and the other OCR built in to KM, there is no such mechanism.

I suspect there are commercial products that can do this.

4

To turn images into a searchable PDF you'll have to use third-party software. Acrobat, Adobe's online PDF to Word converter, PDF Expert, etc -- try a web search on "create searchable pdf from images".

Here's a demo Acrobat-created PDF from a screenshot of your OP (Dropbox link, valid until 2025-06-18).

Depending on what you are trying to achieve, you might be able to do something with KM's OCR -- a plain text file generated from each PDF would at least let you search a folder-full and find "every PDF mentioning chocolate", for example. But I suspect that isn't the kind of search you want...

It's the action's "Language" pop-up -- IIRC, "Apple Text Recognition" is Apple's and all the other options are Tesseract.

5

There’s a command line tool - OCRmyPDF

6

Ooh -- nice find!

One possible issue -- it does use the Tesseract engine, which apparently has issues running under Sequoia.

7

You can select multiple images in the Finder and if Preview is your default app to open them just press command+down arrow. Then command+p to print and save them as a PDF.

Make sure Preview preferences are set to "Open group of files in the same window"

Preview Preference

Images_and_Online_Business_Acknowledgement_250520370261B0520202517182256_pdf
Images_and_Online_Business_Acknowledgement_250520370261B0520202517182256_pdf1004×432 43.7 KB

The following apps have various levels of accuracy.

PDF Converter with OCR.app

OCRWizard.app

I use this macro frequently if it is of any use.

Super Fast Screen Capture and Rename - (5) OCR the Selection.kmmacros (25 KB)

Macro screenshot

Keyboard Maestro Export
Keyboard Maestro Export1482×1512 223 KB

Keyboard Maestro 11.0.4
• Support Apple Text Recognition in OCR Condition. (Unexpected inconsistency in OCR)