Why Traditional OCR Falls Short
If you've ever tried to convert an old scanned PDF to text, you know the frustration. Traditional OCR (Optical Character Recognition) works well for clean, modern documents but struggles with:
Old, Faded Documents
Aging paper, faded ink, and yellowed backgrounds confuse traditional OCR
Complex Layouts
Multi-column text, sidebars, and mixed formatting break standard extraction
Tables & Equations
Financial statements, scientific papers, and data-heavy docs lose structure
Handwritten Content
Signatures, annotations, and handwritten notes are often ignored
This is where AI Vision changes everything. By leveraging the latest AI models through Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, AI Vision doesn't just read characters — it understands your documents.
How AI Vision Works
AI Vision takes a fundamentally different approach to document extraction:
1. Intelligent Page Analysis
Each page of your document is analyzed by advanced AI models that understand visual context, not just individual characters. The AI recognizes document structure, identifies headings, paragraphs, and lists.
2. Structure Preservation
Tables are extracted as proper Markdown tables. Mathematical equations are converted to LaTeX. Lists, headings, and formatting are preserved in the output.
3. Clean Markdown Output
The extracted content is formatted as clean, structured Markdown ready for AI applications, documentation systems, or knowledge bases.
Perfect for These Documents
Legacy Archives
Old contracts, historical records, archived correspondence — documents that have been sitting in filing cabinets for decades can finally be digitized accurately.
- Faded typewriter text
- Carbon copy documents
- Yellowed paper
Legal Documents
Court filings, depositions, contracts — legal professionals need accurate extraction to feed documents into AI analysis tools.
- Scanned court filings
- Multi-page contracts
- Handwritten signatures preserved
Financial Reports
Annual reports, tax documents, financial statements — complex tables and figures are preserved accurately.
- Tables converted to Markdown
- Numbers accurately captured
- Column alignment preserved
Mobile Scans
PDFs created from phone camera scans with varying lighting, angles, and quality are handled gracefully.
- Uneven lighting correction
- Perspective distortion handling
- Low resolution enhancement
Understanding AI Vision Credits
AI Vision is available on the Scale plan with 2000 credits per month. Here's how credits work:
Documents (PDF, DOCX)
1 credit per 5 pages
Images (PNG, JPG, WebP, GIF)
1 credit per file
With 2000 credits per month, a Scale user can process thousands of pages of scanned PDFs or hundreds of individual images monthly — more than enough for most professional workflows.
Enterprise-Grade Security
AI Vision uses Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, ensuring your documents are handled with the highest security standards:
No Data Retention
Documents are not stored after processing
Encrypted Transit
TLS 1.2+ encryption for all data
Compliance Ready
GDPR compliant • Secure processing
Your data is never used to train AI models. See our Privacy Policy for complete details on how we protect your documents.
Ready to Try AI Vision?
Get AI Vision credits per month with Scale and start converting your most challenging documents.
2-day free trial • Process thousands of pages monthly
Conclusion
AI Vision represents a major leap forward in document extraction technology. By leveraging the latest AI models, it can accurately process documents that traditional OCR simply cannot handle — from decades-old archives to complex financial reports.
If you're working with scanned PDFs, legacy documents, or any content that requires more than basic text extraction, AI Vision is the solution you've been waiting for.