PDF Tools

PDF OCR Text Layer

Add searchable/copyable OCR text layer to scanned PDF using Tesseract

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Quick start

Call this tool from your code in three languages.

cURL

# 1) Upload each file first → returns { filePath }
curl -X POST 'https://api.elysiatools.com/upload/pdf-ocr-text-layer' \
  -F 'file=@/path/to/sourceFile.ext'

# 2) Call the tool with the returned filePath values
curl -X POST 'https://api.elysiatools.com/en/api/tools/pdf-ocr-text-layer' \
  -F 'sourceFile=/Users/quyue/www/elysia-tools/public/samples/pdf/pdf-2026-02-19-source-4pages.pdf' \
  -F 'language=eng' \
  -F 'dpi=300' \
  -F 'oem=1' \
  -F 'psm=3'

API reference

Send a POST request with your inputs as JSON. File parameters require a separate upload first.

Endpoint

HTTP

POST https://api.elysiatools.com/en/api/tools/pdf-ocr-text-layer

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
sourceFile	fileupload required	Yes	—
language	text	No	—
dpi	number	No	—
oem	number	No	—
psm	number	No	—

File-type parameters must be uploaded first via POST /upload/pdf-ocr-text-layer, then the returned filePath is passed to the corresponding file field.

MCP integration

Add this tool to your Model Context Protocol server so AI agents can list and call it.

Server configuration

Add this block to your MCP client configuration:

mcp.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "elysiatools-pdf-ocr-text-layer": {
      "name": "pdf-ocr-text-layer",
      "description": "Add searchable/copyable OCR text layer to scanned PDF using Tesseract",
      "baseUrl": "https://api.elysiatools.com/mcp/sse?toolId=pdf-ocr-text-layer",
      "command": "",
      "args": [],
      "env": {},
      "isActive": true,
      "type": "sse"
    }
  }
}

List available tools

After connecting to the SSE endpoint, list the exposed tools:

tools/list

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/list"
}

Call this tool

Invoke the tool by its id, passing arguments built from its parameters:

tools/call

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 2,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "pdf-ocr-text-layer",
    "arguments": {
  "sourceFile": "/Users/quyue/www/elysia-tools/public/samples/pdf/pdf-2026-02-19-source-4pages.pdf",
  "language": "eng",
  "dpi": 300,
  "oem": 1,
  "psm": 3
}
  }
}

Chain multiple tools in one session with a comma-separated toolId list, e.g. /mcp/sse?toolId=png-to-webp,jpg-to-webp,gif-to-webp (max 20).

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