advanced tool
Remove shadows from scanned PDFs and photos
Clean shadows, grey gutters and dark scan patches from old PDFs and photos of documents.
Drop your files here
or click to browse — select as many files as you need
How to remove shadow from PDF in your browser
Old scans and phone photos pick up shadows, dark corners and grey binding gutters. This tool estimates the lighting across every page and divides it out, so the paper comes back clean and white while the text, fonts, colours and layout stay exactly as they were.
- 1Upload a scanned PDF or photo.
- 2Set the removal strength and paper whitening.
- 3Run the cleanup.
- 4Download the cleaned PDF or image.
What this remove shadow from PDF tool does
Lighting-aware cleanup
The paper tone is measured across the whole page, so uneven lighting is flattened without washing out the ink.
Text stays crisp
Dark pixels are protected, so letters keep their weight and edges instead of being blurred or thinned.
Colours preserved
Coloured stamps, logos and highlighter keep their original hue unless you switch to a plain black-and-white result.
Why people use it
- Free with no account, no email and no watermark
- Runs in the browser — documents stay on your device
- Works on Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS
- Also great for scan shadow remover and remove shadow from scanned document
Frequently asked questions
Does it work with multi-page PDFs?
- Yes — every page is cleaned and returned in one PDF at the resolution you choose.
Will it blur my text?
- No. There is no blurring or smoothing; only the lighting is corrected.
Related PDF tools
Continue your workflow with another free PDF tool from PaperWorksPDF.