(Archived) PDF vs Image for searches

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Hi everyone, about to start scanning using my new Scansnap scanner. Just wondering whether PDFs or jpegs are more efficient for using the search function of Evernote. I would think that jpegs would take less resources for Evernote and would return results faster. Any ideas?

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Hi - a picture format has a different search result than a PDF format. JPG's have no inbuilt 'text' option, so what looks like "confirmation" might be "information" or (less likely but..) "assassination". Evernote's OCR engine will give you a tree of possible meanings of each word. PDF's on the other hand have a text option and if you save an OCR'd word that says "confirmation" there's no possibility that it is anything else. So by definition (there's a pun in there somewhere) searches within PDFs are that much more precise. And a PDF is tidier - multi-page scans are one steppable image in PDF, a string of similar filenames in JPG.

On the other hand when you look at your note in iOS (I believe) or Android (definitely) a picture will show up immediately, while a PDF is an icon that needs another click to open it to see the content.

So. If you're going to have lots of notes and want to avoid phantom (and occasionally weird) hits when you search for some words, use PDFs where you can. If you need to refer to content for directions, agendae or anything else on a mobile, you may want to use an occasional JPG.

Evernote is always evolving, so the JPG vs PDF display issue might go away at any point - plus there are 'how big does my image display?" and "which image is the thumbnail" issues that will get fixed, but might be annoying if you JPG everything.

Hope that helps.