Can OCR Read an Embossed Seal on a Certified Copy?

OCR cannot be counted on to read an embossed seal. A raised seal is a dent in the paper with no ink, so a flat scan shows a faint ring or nothing, and there are no dark letters for the software to find. Capture the seal as a picture, and record it in the converted text with a bracketed note.

Can OCR read an embossed seal?

No, not in any way you should rely on. Recognition looks for dark shapes on a light ground. An embossed seal offers pale shadows on pale paper, arranged in a circle. The text around the seal converts as normal; the seal's own wording does not arrive, and nothing in the output tells you a seal was there.

That silence is the real risk. A converted birth record, judgment or corporate certificate reads as complete, and a reader working from the text alone has no reason to think the page carried a seal. Three separate questions sit behind the one in the heading, and they have different answers:

That silence hurts on a certified probate paper. You are looking for the clerk's seal beside the personal representative or the administrator, and for any line that names a testamentary trust or states that the estate is in intestacy. Photograph the seal and type those names from the picture, not from a guess.

Why does a raised seal disappear on a scan?

A raised seal is made of height, and a scanner records darkness. The lamp in a flatbed or feeder lights the page evenly from close by, which is the right design for ink and the wrong one for relief. With no shadows, the ridges of the impression are the same shade as the paper around them.

Your eye finds the seal by tilting the page until light catches one side of each ridge. A scanner cannot tilt anything. Whatever trace survives is a slight shading where the paper curves, and the scan mode decides what happens to it:

• Black and white turns every pixel into ink or paper. Faint shading falls on the paper side and is erased.
• Grayscale keeps light grays, so part of the ring may show.
• Color keeps the same shading and also the tint of the paper, which helps when the seal sits on colored security stock.

A photocopy made before the scan loses the seal the same way, and no later setting brings it back. If the file holds only a copy of a certified copy, the seal may be gone for good, and the fix is a fresh certified copy from the issuing office. The comparison of grayscale and black and white scanning explains what each mode keeps.

Capturing a raised seal so it shows without altering the original

Scan the page on the glass in grayscale or color, then take one extra picture of the seal with light coming from the side. Do nothing to the paper. Pencil rubbed over a seal changes the certified copy itself, and you cannot undo it.

A sequence that works with office equipment:

1. Scan the whole page as you would any other, in grayscale or color, and keep that file as the page of record.
2. Look at the scan at 200%. If the ring and some lettering are visible, you may need nothing more.
3. If the seal is invisible, photograph it. Lay the page flat on a dark surface. Switch off overhead light if you can. Hold a lamp or flashlight low, almost level with the paper, so the light skims across the seal.
4. Move the light around the seal and take two or three pictures from different sides. Each angle brings out different letters.
5. Include a little of the surrounding text in the frame, so the picture shows where on the page the seal sits.
6. Name the pictures after the page, for example Exhibit-12-p3-seal-side-light.jpg, and keep them beside the scan.

What not to do to the paper

• Do not shade the seal with pencil, chalk or graphite.
• Do not ink it or press it against carbon paper.
• Do not flatten a curled page under weight with the seal against a hard edge.
• Do not remove staples, ribbons or grommets that tie certified pages together without asking the lawyer first.

If the document is going to be filed or presented, how the seal must appear is a question for the rule of the court or agency receiving it. Read that rule, or ask the clerk; do not assume a scan that hides the seal will be accepted, or that it will be refused.

A side-lit photograph is a picture, and a converter treats it as one. If you need the image of the seal in a Word file, the post on scanning a signature into Word covers placing signatures, logos and seals as pictures.

Circular seal lettering and inked notary stamps

Seal wording runs around a circle, and recognition is built around straight lines of text. Even a seal that shows clearly in the image may come back as scattered letters, words out of order or nothing. An inked rectangular stamp is a different object: dark type in rows, which is ordinary work for OCR.

Sort what is on your page into one of these before deciding how to handle it:

Read the commission number, expiration date and county from the image in every case. Those are short strings of digits and names, where one wrong character matters and nothing flags it. The post on whether OCR can read stamps over text covers inked stamps and what they do to the words beneath them.

The seal is one part of a notarial block. For the wording around it, see the section on notary blocks, jurats and signatures on a sworn statement, and the guide to a scanned notarized document for acknowledgments and seals on the scanned page.

Certified copies bring a second feature that scans badly. The paper itself may be printed with a tint or a hidden pattern, covered in the section on VOID patterns and security paper on certified copies.

How should a converted document note a seal the text cannot show?

Add a short note in square brackets at the place in the text where the seal sits on the page. Say what kind of seal it is, what you can read of it, and how you read it. Never type seal wording into the text as though the software had found it.

The National Archives gives its volunteer transcribers the same device. Its transcription tips say: "If you'd like to make a notation about something you see in the record, do so in brackets. For example: [stamp in blue ink]."

Notes you can adapt:

[embossed seal, lower left, over signature of clerk; visible on original, not visible in scan]
[embossed seal: outer ring reads "COUNTY CLERK" and a county name; center illegible; read from side-lit photograph]
[inked notary stamp: name, commission number and expiration date typed from image by JR, 3 Oct.]
[seal area: nothing visible in scan; original not examined]

Four rules keep the note honest:

• Describe, do not conclude. Write what is on the page. Whether the seal makes the document certified, authentic or admissible is the lawyer's call and depends on the governing rule.
• Separate "not visible" from "none". If you have only a scan and see no seal, write "not visible in scan". The paper may carry one.
• Say who read it and from what. The original, a photograph and a flat scan are three different sources.
• Use one form across the matter. The post on marking in converted text what the page shows but the text cannot sets out a convention that also covers redactions and struck words.

When you export, keep the page picture with the text. A searchable PDF holds your original file with the text behind it, so whatever the scan shows of the seal stays in view. Schema Law lists that format among its exports, next to Word and plain text for the working copy that carries your bracketed notes.