Elucidate takes your scanned-text PDF and turns it into a written-usable text PDF. The output PDF may now be searched through using a simple text searching function; this is not possible with the original file.

Turn scanned PDF text into usable text

Elucidate is a simple tool where you load your PDF file into it, and it outputs a PDF file that has usable text. If the original has scanned text or is copy protected, then you may get around this by using Elucidate to turn the PDF into a PDF with usable/searchable text. The tool is obviously able to turn copy-protected files into usable text files (in some cases), but the developers market this tool based on its ability to turn scanned PDFs pages into textual PDFs where the information may be searched. How you choose to use this tool is up to you, but just because you now have access to the text, it doesn't mean it isn't still copyrighted.

A fair option for people who need PDFs converted

Elucidate is a reasonably good tool for people who have collected a lot of PDF material and much of it is scanned text. A tool such as Elucidate may help you search through your PDF collection without having to read your way through; you can use the text search function on the output file. The program has a few problems, such as how the formatting is often disjointed and a mess, and how the program outputs a file through Quartz, which means the PDF outputs are not compatible with certain PDF tools.