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Clean scanned document online: straight, cropped, readable
Clean a scanned document online for free: ScanReviver straightens, crops and de-shadows up to 30 pages in one go and gives you back a neat PDF or image.
A phone photo of a document is rarely tidy — it's tilted, the edges of the desk show, and one side is darker than the other. This fixes that in a few seconds, needs no account, and your upload is deleted right after processing.
Your file is deleted the moment it's done. The big PDF sites keep your bank statements and IDs on their servers. Here the original goes right after processing, the result after 45 minutes — or sooner, on your click.
The edges are found for you here. Want to drag the corners yourself, reorder pages or switch between colour and black & white? Open the full scanner.
Clean your document now
Upload a JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, GIF or AVIF photo: no sign-up, nothing to install.
Open the tool →How it works
Three steps. You only really touch the middle one.
- Photograph the page. Lay it flat, keep your own shadow off the paper and let the page fill most of the frame. A plain phone photo is enough; a scanner or a scanning app is not needed.
- Drop it in and check the corners. The four corners of the page are found for you, and you can drag them so the desk, your fingers and the background are cut away. Add more photos if it is a multi-page document, up to 30 pages on the free tier.
- Pick a look and download. Colour, Clean or Black & White, then save it as a JPG, PNG or PDF — with a searchable OCR text layer if you tick that box.
What we see before a document even gets cleaned
What "cleaning" a document actually does
ScanReviver runs a small, predictable set of steps on your image:
- Find the page: it detects the document's four corners, and you can drag them to fine-tune the crop so the desk, hands and background are cut away.
- Straighten it: perspective correction squares up a page shot at an angle, and small tilts are levelled so text runs horizontally.
- Even out the lighting: it lifts the background toward white and reduces uneven shadows, so a page that was grey and blotchy reads clearly.
- Choose a look: keep it in colour, produce a clean near-white document, or go crisp black & white for text-only pages.
- Export: download a JPG, PNG, or a PDF (single- or multi-page), optionally with a searchable text layer.
What "clean" means here
"Clean" is a vague word on most tool pages, so here is exactly which four things change and which things do not.
- Perspective. A page photographed from above your chest is wider at the bottom than at the top. The four corners you set are mapped back onto a rectangle, so the page becomes a rectangle again and the lines of text run straight across. The pixels are resampled to do that, which is why a very low-resolution photo of a page looks slightly softer afterwards.
- Shadow. The lighting across the page is flattened, not erased. Your own shadow, the gradient from a window on one side and the grey blotches from a desk lamp are evened out so the paper reads as one tone. A shadow so dark that the letters underneath it are gone cannot come back — there is nothing left to lift.
- Crop. Everything outside the four corners is thrown away for good: the desk, your thumb, the second page lying next to it. Crop a little wider than you think you need if the page has text close to the edge.
- Contrast. Colour keeps the letterhead and the highlighter; Clean pushes the paper towards white for a scanned-in look; Black & White is a hard threshold that gives the smallest file and the crispest plain text.
And the other half of the answer — what cleaning a scan here does not do:
- No text is rewritten or invented. There is no generative AI anywhere in this tool. It never rephrases a sentence, corrects a spelling mistake, changes a number or a date, or redraws a signature or a stamp. What was on the paper is what comes out.
- No detail is restored. If the photo is out of focus or the text is hidden under a finger, cleaning it up cannot put back what the camera never captured. A sharper photo beats any amount of processing.
- No document is certified. A cleaned scan is a tidier picture of your page, not an authenticated or legally verified copy.
- Nothing is done in secret. The work runs on our own servers, not in your browser tab: the file is uploaded, processed, and then deleted — the original right after processing, the result 45 minutes later, on every tier.
Colour, clean or black & white?
Pick the mode that matches the page:
- Colour Document: keeps colours (letterheads, forms with coloured fields, highlighted notes) while still flattening the lighting.
- Clean Document: pushes the background to near-white for a scanned-in look; the best all-round choice for printed text.
- Black & White: high-contrast, smallest files, ideal for plain text you plan to print or archive.
What the cleanup assumes about your page
The Clean and Colour modes work by estimating the paper background across the whole image and dividing the photo by that estimate. That is what flattens uneven lighting while keeping the ink dark. It rests on one assumption: the paper is the lightest thing in the frame.
Most of the time that holds, and the result looks like a real scan. Two situations break it, and they're worth recognising:
- A mostly dark image — a photo of a screen, a slide with a black background, a page shot in near-darkness. There the estimate would latch onto a few bright pixels and push everything else towards white unevenly, channel by channel, which shows up as a colour cast. The tool checks for this and skips the correction on a dark image rather than applying an assumption that doesn't hold. If your result looks untouched, that's usually why: re-shoot with more light.
- A big dark photograph on the page. A full-width picture in a magazine article counts as "not paper" over a large area, and the correction can lighten locally around it. Cropping tightly to the text you actually need avoids it.
Cleaning is not compressing
Cleanup changes how a page looks; the mode you pick also decides how big the file is, which matters when a portal caps uploads at a few megabytes.
- Colour keeps all three channels and the most detail: the largest file.
- Clean pushes the paper to near-white. Large flat white areas compress well, so the file is typically noticeably smaller than Colour.
- Black & White is a hard threshold, so the page becomes two tones. Smallest by a wide margin, and the right choice for a text-only archive — as long as nothing on the page is faint, because a threshold either keeps a pixel or throws it away.
If the goal is "as small as possible while still legible", try Black & White first and check the smallest text on the page at full zoom before you commit. If a faint line has vanished, step back to Clean.
A clean scanned document online free search and a clean up scanned document run land on the same picker. Clean up a scanned document once, and the picker remembers your last mode. Clean up scanned documents together in the same pass — up to ten at once. Clean up scanned document online never needs an account. How to clean scanned document questions all point to that same Clean, Colour or Black & White choice. A clean scanned pdf document is the same job when the source is already a PDF — it's read page by page and cleaned the same way as a photo. Clean up scanned document online free work covers up to 10 documents a day at no cost, without an account. Despite how it's sometimes phrased, an ai clean scanned document or ai clean up scanned document search isn't quite right: there's no generative model here, just the predictable perspective, lighting and contrast steps described above.
By Sam Ridder — I build and run ScanReviver on my own hardware, on my own. Who I am.
Use it as a PDF scanner app, without installing one
Most people looking for a PDF scanner app want one thing: a photo of a page that ends up looking like a scan, inside a PDF. That is what this page does, and there is nothing in an app store to download for it. You open a web page, upload the photos, and download the file. Nothing is stored on your phone, so a phone that is nearly out of space still works.
Two things a phone app usually does that this does too: several pages in one PDF, in an order you set by dragging, and an optional OCR text layer so you can search the document later. It reads English, Dutch and German. Leave OCR off and the PDF is image-only, which makes a smaller file.
One thing a phone app does that this does not: run on your own device. The cleaning happens on our servers, which is why the speed does not depend on how old your phone is — and also why we say plainly what happens to the file. It is uploaded, processed, and deleted: the original right after processing, the finished result 45 minutes later, on the free tier and on both passes. You can delete it sooner with the "Delete now" button.
The free tier does 10 documents a day, up to 30 pages and 250 MB per file. A free monthly pass raises that to 30 documents a day, 50 pages and 300 MB; a €5 ShinobiTools pass to 100 documents a day, 100 pages and 500 MB, and it works on the other ShinobiTools sites too.
Frequently asked questions
Is it really free?
Yes. Cleaning documents is free and needs no account, up to 10 documents a day; that counter resets at midnight. A free monthly pass raises it to 30 a day and a €5 ShinobiTools pass to 100. Ads on these pages help cover the server costs.
What happens to my files?
Your file is uploaded to our own servers and cleaned there, not in your browser tab. Your original upload is deleted right after processing and the cleaned result 45 minutes later — on the free tier and on both passes — and you can delete it immediately with the "Delete now" button. Files are never used for AI training and are never sold or shared.
Can it clean a multi-page document?
Yes. Add several photos, arrange the order, and download one combined PDF. That is up to 30 pages in one document on the free tier, 50 with a free monthly pass and 100 with a €5 pass.
Will it change the text on my document?
ScanReviver doesn't use generative AI, so it never rewrites text, changes numbers or recreates signatures or stamps. It does adjust the image (contrast, colour, black & white), so fine details can shift — always check the result before relying on it.
Which files can I upload, and how big?
JPG, PNG, WebP, HEIC, TIFF, BMP, GIF and AVIF, up to 250 MB per file on the free tier (300 MB with a free monthly pass, 500 MB with a €5 pass). An iPhone HEIC photo is accepted as it comes off the camera, so nothing needs converting first.
Can I get a searchable PDF out of it?
Yes. Tick the OCR box before you download and a hidden text layer is placed under the picture of each page, so you can select, copy and search the words. It reads English, Dutch and German. Leave the box unticked and the PDF is image-only, which is a smaller file.
Which mode should I pick: Colour, Clean or Black & White?
Clean is the right default for printed text: it pushes the paper towards white and keeps the ink dark. Choose Colour when the page has a letterhead, coloured form fields or highlighter you need to keep. Choose Black & White for a plain text page you want as small as possible — but check the faintest line at full zoom first, because a threshold either keeps a pixel or throws it away.
Why does my result look almost untouched?
The lighting correction assumes the paper is the lightest thing in the frame. On a mostly dark image — a photo of a screen, a slide with a black background, a page shot in near-darkness — that assumption fails, so the tool deliberately skips the correction instead of pushing the colours around. Re-shoot with more light and it will work.
Do I need an account or an app?
Neither. There is no sign-up, no app in any store, and no watermark on the result. You open the page, upload your photos and download the cleaned document.
How do I clean a scanned PDF online for free?
Upload the photo or PDF above, pick Clean or Black & White, and download the result. No account, no install, and no daily cap on the free tier.
What's the best way to clean up a scanned photo?
Upload the photo as it came off your phone. ScanReviver crops to the page, straightens it and evens out the lighting in one pass, so you don't need to fix the angle or the shadow yourself first.
Is there a free document cleaner online?
Yes. ScanReviver is a free document cleaner: no account, no watermark, up to 10 documents a day. Ads on the page cover the server costs.
How can I turn a messy scan into a clean PDF?
Upload the photo or scan, choose Clean to push the paper toward white, and export as PDF. The layout and text stay exactly as they were — only the lighting, crop and angle are fixed.
Is there a free tool to make a document photo look properly scanned?
Yes. Upload a photo of the page and ScanReviver crops, straightens and cleans it into something that looks like it came off a real scanner — no app or account needed.
How do I clean up an old scanned document and remove the background clutter?
Crop to the page first — that alone removes the desk, hands or background around it — then run Clean or Black & White to even out the paper and lift out any remaining marks.
Can this fix a bad scanned document, not just a bad photo?
Yes — a bad scanned document with shadows, a crooked angle or a grey tint runs through the same three fixes: crop, straighten and even out the lighting.
Do I get clean pages back if I upload several photos at once?
Yes, every page in the batch is cropped and evened out the same way, so the whole set becomes clean pages in one combined PDF.
What is a scanned document, exactly?
What is a scanned document boils down to this: a flat, cropped, evenly lit image or PDF of a page, as if it came off a real flatbed scanner rather than a phone camera. What is scanned document as a search usually means the same thing — people looking for that clean, squared-off look.
How to scanned documents look their best when the original is creased or dog-eared?
Crop tight to the page edges first, then run Clean or Black & White — that fixes lighting and tone, though a physical crease or tear still shows as a faint line since nothing here repaints the paper itself.
Is there a cleanup scanned photos option, or a clean scanned pdf online mode specifically?
Yes — cleanup scanned photos and clean scanned pdf online are the same feature here: upload the photo, pick Clean or Black & White, and export as PDF or image.
Is there a clean scanner online, or does it work as a general scanned document cleaner?
Yes — it works as a clean scanner online and a scanned document cleaner at once: no physical scanner needed, just a photo of the page.
Can I clean scan files, or clean a document scan background specifically?
Yes — to clean scan files or clean document scan background clutter, crop tight to the page first (that removes the desk or background around it), then run Clean or Black & White to even out the paper itself.
Is there a clean up scanned image online free option, or a free scan clean up in general?
Yes — clean up scanned image online free and free scan clean up both describe this page: no account, no watermark, no charge.
Do all the pages clean and look the same after a batch upload?
Yes — pdf pages clean and look same across a batch: every page in the upload goes through the identical crop and lighting fix, so a multi-page result looks consistent page to page.
Is there a clean up scanned pdf online free mode, or a clean up scanned png option?
Yes — clean up scanned pdf online free and clean up scanned png both work the same way: upload, clean, export as PDF or PNG, free either way.
Is there a way to clean up and straighten a scanned photo in one pass, online?
Yes — clean up and straighten scanned photo happens in the same upload: the page is detected and squared automatically, and Clean or Black & White evens out the lighting, one step, online, no install.
Does this restore an old or damaged scanned document, not just clean it?
Not restoration — an oneline clean and restore scanned document search usually means fixing lighting, crop and angle, which this does; it doesn't repair torn paper, fill in missing ink or recolour faded print the way true photo restoration does.
Can it clean a scanned PSD file?
No — PSD (Photoshop's own format) isn't a supported upload here; this reads JPG, PNG, WebP and HEIC photos, or existing PDFs. Export the PSD as a JPG or PNG first if you need to clean scanned psd content this way.
Honest limitations
ScanReviver improves readability; it does not certify or authenticate documents. Very dark shadows, text hidden under objects or fingers, and severe blur may still look imperfect after cleaning. If automatic page detection misses, you place the four corners yourself. It is a cleanup tool, not a way to recover detail that the photo never captured.
Once a scan is clean, enhance scanned document sharpens contrast and text further. If shadows from a phone camera are the real problem, remove shadow from document targets exactly that. Working from an old printed photo rather than a document? The cleanup here happens after the shot is taken — cleaning the physical print first, dust and all, before you scan it gets you a better starting image than fixing it digitally afterwards ever can.