Glossary
Key terms for understanding PDF converter tools, explained in plain language.
- Portable Document Format — a file format that preserves a document's layout, fonts, and images across devices and platforms.
- OCR
- Optical Character Recognition — technology that converts text in scanned images or photos into editable, searchable text.
- Conversion accuracy
- How faithfully a converter reproduces the original document's layout, tables, fonts, and images in the output file.
- Batch conversion
- Converting many files at once in a single operation, rather than one at a time — a major time-saver for high-volume work.
- Local processing
- Converting files on your own device rather than uploading them to a server. Important for sensitive or confidential documents.
- Compression
- Reducing a PDF's file size — often by downsampling images — so it's easier to email, upload, or store.
- Searchable PDF
- A PDF whose text can be selected and searched, as opposed to an image-only scan. OCR turns image-only PDFs into searchable ones.
- Fillable form
- A PDF with interactive fields users can type into, select, or sign electronically.