How to use PaperMend
Everything the editor can do, in the order you'll meet it. Ten minutes to read; two to get the idea.
Prefer to follow along with pictures? The tutorials take you through common jobs step by step.
Signing in
There's no password. Enter your email address and PaperMend sends you a link. Click the link, press the button on the page it opens, and you're in for 30 days on that browser. Each link works once and expires after 15 minutes; if it has expired, ask for another.
Security scanners in some email systems open links before you do. That's why the link shows a button rather than signing you in straight away: only a real click counts.
Uploading a scan
Drop a PDF, JPG, PNG or HEIC (an iPhone photo) onto the start screen, or press Choose a file. Up to 20 pages at a time; each page counts against your monthly allowance when it's uploaded. Photographs of a page work too: PaperMend finds the page in the photo, cuts away what's round it and straightens it. For the best reading, lay the page flat on a darker surface in good light, with all four corners in the photo.
PaperMend then reads the page. It finds every line of printed text and works out its size, weight, colour and alignment. Signatures, stamps, logos and pictures are picked out separately. A window shows progress; a dense page takes a little longer than a sparse one.
Tick Also fix reading errors and find handwriting with AI before uploading if you'd like misread words corrected and handwriting found as it goes. See AI corrections for what that does and costs.
Retyping text
Click any text on the page to select it: you can move it, remove it or change its font, and it keeps its scanned look. Double-click it (or press Enter) to type: it becomes a box with the words the scan read already there. Change what you like and click elsewhere on the page when you're done. Your new text is set in the same size, weight and colour as the print around it, and the paper behind the old words is cleaned so nothing shows through.
If you type more than fits, a paragraph's words flow on to its next lines, as in a word processor, and the box grows taller. If there's print just under the paragraph, its lines are made a little longer instead, up to where the paragraph's own lines could reach, so it doesn't run over that print. A line on its own, such as a date or a name, widens into the free space beside it, then wraps. If the scan read something wrongly, just correct it as you type. Press Esc to leave a box without changing anything.
The side panel names what you've selected. Once you've changed it, the panel offers Revert to the scan, which puts the original print back.
Show what I've changed, under More, outlines every edit on the page, which is handy before you download.
Text in pieces, or run together
PaperMend keeps a paragraph, an address or a list item in one piece, so a double-click opens all of it, and words printed in bold or another colour stay that way as you type. If something still comes out in pieces, select one piece, click Join with… in the side panel, then click the other piece. If two things come out as one, such as a heading and the paragraph under it, double-click the text, put the cursor in the line that should start the second part, and click Split here. Pieces printed in different sizes or typefaces, or with other text between them, can't be joined. Join and Split work on text you haven't changed yet: to join or split text you've changed, revert it first.
Zooming in
To work on small print, zoom in with + at the bottom of the page, and out again with −. Fit makes the page as wide as the window again. On a trackpad, pinch to zoom. With a mouse, hold Ctrl and turn the wheel. Either way, the place under the pointer stays where it is. You can go on typing, moving and drawing boxes while zoomed in.
Fonts, size and colour
PaperMend works out the typeface from the print and shows it in the side panel's Font list as the best match. Open the list to choose another of its 86 fonts: every one is used in the PDF exactly as it shows on screen. Calibri, Cambria and Georgia are listed by name, each as a free font with the same letter widths (Carlito, Caladea and Gelasio), and Baskerville, Bodoni, Comic Sans MS, Franklin Gothic, Futura and Garamond as free look-alikes.
Weight (Regular or Bold), size, letter width and colour can each be changed. While you're typing, select some words first and Bold (or Cmd+B) or a colour changes just those words. Once you've changed one, Use this style for similar text sets the same on all the text on the page printed like it, so a document with one body typeface only needs setting once.
Adding a box
Press Add box, then drag on the page to draw one, or click once for a single-line box. A box can:
- Add text where there was none: type into it. With the fill set to None, only the text is printed.
- Cover something: set the fill to Paper and the box is filled with paper that matches the page, hiding whatever is underneath. Type into it as well if you want new text there.
- Fill with a colour for a coloured background, for example to match a shaded form field.
Drag the bar on the left of a box to move it and the corner square to resize it. Boxes can be brought to the front or sent behind other boxes.
Cleaning up specks and smudges
Press Clean up and paint over anything you'd like gone: a speck, a smudge, a coffee ring, punched holes, a scanner's streak, or a bit a removed stamp left behind. Whatever you paint over becomes clean paper that matches the page around it. Text you retype there later goes on top of it.
Change the brush's size in the side panel, or with the [ and ] keys. Table and form lines you paint across are kept, so you can clean right up to them. To paint out a line itself, such as a scanner's streak, untick Keep table and form lines and paint along it.
Undo takes back the last stroke, and Undo all clean-up on this page takes back every stroke on the page. Press Esc or Done when you've finished.
Signatures, stamps and pictures
Anything on the page that isn't printed text, such as a signature, a stamp, a logo or a photo, is picked out as a mark. Click one to select it, then:
- Move it by dragging the bar on its left. Clean paper is left where it was.
- Remove it with the Remove button or the Delete key. The paper behind it is repaired. If the mark crossed any text, PaperMend tells you which lines it touched, and with AI on it offers to put back the words the mark covered: see Words under a stamp.
- Copy it to paste elsewhere on the page or on another page.
Sometimes two things that touch are picked out as one mark, such as a stamp pressed against a signature, or a firm's name beside its logo. Select it, choose Split off part of it, and drag a box round the part. That part becomes a mark of its own, so you can remove the stamp and keep the signature. Undo puts them back together.
Handwriting on a printed page, such as a note beside a line or initials in the margin, is treated as a mark too, so it's never retyped in a font that looks nothing like it. PaperMend spots clear handwriting by itself. The AI check at upload finds the rest.
If some handwriting is still selected as text, click it and choose Make this a picture. It's then moved and removed as it looks on the scan, and never retyped. The same button works for part of a logo that was read as text. To change it back, choose Make this text again.
If PaperMend has treated something as a mark that you'd rather retype, cover it with a paper box and add the text in a new box.
Words under a stamp
When a stamp was pressed over printed text, removing it takes the letters it touched with it. With AI on (tick Also fix reading errors and find handwriting with AI when you upload), PaperMend sends the part of the page round the stamp to Anthropic's Claude, which works out what the covered words said from the letters still showing and the sentence round them.
A card on the page shows each line it puts back, outlined on the page. Accept puts the line in, set in the page's own print on clean paper. Edit puts it in and lets you change it first. Reject leaves the line for you to retype. Nothing goes into your download until you accept it.
Numbers are never guessed. A line whose missing part holds a figure, or that couldn't be worked out safely, is marked for you to type in instead, starting where the gap is.
It uses one AI credit for the whole document, however many stamps you remove.
Copying and pasting
Select any text, box or mark and press ⌘C (or Copy in the side panel), then ⌘V or the Paste button. Text pastes as a new box in the same typeface, size and colour; a mark pastes as a copy you can move independently. You can paste on the same page or on another page of the document.
AI corrections
Optical character recognition occasionally misreads a character: a capital I as a vertical bar, an O as a zero, "rn" as "m". AI correction sends the page's image and recognised text to Anthropic's Claude, which returns likely corrections and says which words are handwritten, so they can be kept as marks.
Handwriting is only looked for on pages you haven't edited yet, which is always the case if you tick the box at upload.
It also looks at text that came out in pieces, such as an address whose lines were read apart, and puts the pieces that belong together into one, so a double-click opens all of it. Split here takes one apart again (see Text in pieces, or run together).
It costs one AI credit per page and is only charged if it succeeds. Its rules are strict: numbers, amounts and dates are never altered, and text you've already retyped is left exactly as you typed it. Each corrected block shows the change and offers Use what the scan read if you'd rather have the original.
Turn it on at upload time, or run it on a page from the side panel later. With the tick box on, removing a stamp from text also puts back the words it covered: see Words under a stamp.
Preview and download
Preview shows the page exactly as it will be exported, with your changes blended in and the paper repaired. Close it with its button, a click outside the page, or Esc.
Download PDF builds the file. Pages come back at the scan's original resolution. On Pro, the PDF is clean and carries a searchable text layer, so the words can be found and copied. On the free plan the pages carry a small PaperMend watermark.
Keyboard shortcuts
| ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z | Undo / redo. A burst of typing is one step. |
| ⌘C / ⌘V | Copy / paste the selected text, box or mark. |
| ⌘+ / ⌘− / ⌘0 | Zoom in / zoom out / fit the page to the window. |
| Esc | Leave the text box you're typing in; press again to deselect. |
| Delete | Remove the selected box or mark. |
| ⌥ + arrow keys | Nudge the selected item by a pixel. Add ⇧ for ten. |
| [ / ] | While cleaning up: a smaller / bigger brush. Esc finishes. |
On Windows, use Ctrl for ⌘ and Alt for ⌥.
Your documents
Everything saves automatically as you work; you can close the tab and come back. The start screen lists your documents with the date each will be deleted. Uploaded documents, and everything made from them, are deleted automatically 7 days after upload. Delete one sooner with its Delete button, or all of them with Delete all of these now.
If you open the same document in two windows, the second window is told rather than silently overwriting the first.
Your plan and subscription
The side panel shows your plan and how much of this month's allowance you've used. Allowances reset on the first of each month. On the free plan you have 10 pages and 5 AI credits a month; Pro has 500 and 200, and clean downloads. An AI credit fixes the reading errors on one page, or puts back the words under the stamps you remove from one document.
To upgrade, press Upgrade to Pro and pay on Stripe's page; your account switches to Pro within a few seconds. To change your card, switch between monthly and yearly, or cancel, open More, then Your subscription. Cancelling keeps Pro until the end of the period you've paid for, and Keep Pro undoes a cancellation. See refunds and cancellation for the 14-day refund on a first payment.
Reporting a problem
If something goes wrong or doesn't look right, open More, then Report a problem. Say what you did, what happened and what you expected, and press Send. It's emailed to us with your email address, so we can reply. If a document is open, you can also tick the box to send us the page you're on and your changes to it, so we can see the problem for ourselves. Leave it unticked if the page shows details you'd rather not share.
PaperMend is launching soon. This guide shows how it will work.