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So after I installed the "all the plugins" download, I noticed the OCR and PDF functions still weren't available so I set down to try and figure out how to do that.

OCR plugin

1. Download the self-extracting EXE and launch
2. Set extract folder to your Plugins directory (or App\IrfanView\Plugins for the PA version)
3. From the Options menu, select Start OCR
4. Select dictionary and optional spelling program
5. Draw a box around the text you want from the preview window (there is no "save all")
   
   The program will open a separate Notepad with the text.

To open PDF files (Thanks to Joby)

1. On the download page, click on the latest version
2. Download the 32 or 64-bit EXE (where XXX is the version number: gsXXXw32.exe or gsXXXw64.exe)
3. Open this file using 7-zip
4. In the folder $_OUTDIR\bin\, copy the file gsdll32.dll to a directory of your choice (I saved it to the Plugins directory)
5. From the menu, select Options - Properties/Settings
6. Choose Plugins from the white box
7. Choose PostScript Options and click Custom Path
8. Enter the full directory location of the DLL file
   
   • For example: if you saved it to your plugins folder on the Z:\ drive, your directory will look something like z:\portable programs\IrfanView\Plugins\gsdll32.dll or z:\portable programs\IrfanViewPortable\App\IrfanView\Plugins\gsdll32.dll)
9. Select OK on the dialog box for that window and then OK for the one below it
10. Drag and drop any PDF to the IrfanView window

( I tried to use relative paths above as Joby suggested, but couldn't figure out the root folder. )

1. For IrfanView and GhostScript:
- extract GH files using UE
- specify gsdll32.dll's path in IrfanView/Options/PlugIns/Postscript options/Custom path (relative to i_view32.exe is OK)



2. For OCR:
- extract the OCR plugin files using 7zip or UE from setup_kadmos_irfanview_us.exe
- move ocr_kadmos.dll and the folder ocr_kadmos (from inside $_OUTDIR) in IrfanView's Plugins folder
- use F9 (select a language and a dictionary)

Verified -- thanks Joby.

I linked to the directory rather than directly to the DLL file. Updating initial entry...

Despite my PDF plugin howto being way too long, I went ahead and posted this thread to the official entry underneath the other extract instructions.

Thanks for the tutorial guys.

I don't really need to read PDFs with Irfanview. I needed the ability to create PDFs.

I found out that this can be done with the IMPDF plugin available here:
http://www.irfanview.com/plugins.htm

Download the iv_formats.zip, extract impdf.dll and paste into /IrfanViewPortable/App/IrfanView/Plugins/. You should now be able to save your image as a PDF using "File > Save As".