Paint over a scribble, lasso a margin note or box a highlighted line. Recovoly removes the pen, pencil and highlighter - and rebuilds the printed text and paper underneath - while every mark you don't touch stays exactly as it was.
Scribble removed
Line underneath rebuilt
Margin note gone
Paper tone matched
Highlighter kept
Only marked areas change
Animated walkthrough of the AI Restore Studio removing a ballpoint scribble and a margin note from a scanned textbook page.
8
kinds of pen mark - from ballpoint to highlighter
0
pixels changed outside the marks you choose
4
ways to mark: brush, lasso, box or ellipse
multi-page files cleaned and saved as one
Erase the ink and you erase the print with it. Whiten the page and the blue pen fades but never leaves. Removing pen marks properly means taking the ink out and putting the text back.
The usual fixes
With Recovoly
Tick the marks to remove from this textbook page. Notice the printed line under the scribble comes back complete - and whatever you leave ticked off stays exactly where it was.
Remove these marks
2 mark types removed. Everything else stays as scanned.
CHAPTER 4 · EARTH SCIENCE
The Water Cycle
Water on Earth is always on the move. It rises
into the air as vapour, gathers into clouds,
falls back as rain or snow and flows across
the land to rivers, lakes and the sea. This
endless journey is called the water cycle.
Evaporation begins the cycle. Heat from the
sun warms oceans, lakes and puddles, and the
surface water turns into an invisible gas. Plants
add even more vapour through their leaves in a
process known as transpiration.
As warm, moist air rises it cools, and the
vapour condenses into tiny droplets that form
clouds. When the droplets join together and
grow heavy, they fall as precipitation - rain,
sleet, snow or hail - and the cycle begins again.
Key words
evaporation · condensation · precipitation · transpiration
42
CHAPTER 4 · EARTH SCIENCE
The Water Cycle
Water on Earth is always on the move. It rises
into the air as vapour, gathers into clouds,
falls back as rain or snow and flows across
the land to rivers, lakes and the sea. This
endless journey is called the water cycle.
Evaporation begins the cycle. Heat from the
sun warms oceans, lakes and puddles, and the
surface water turns into an invisible gas. Plants
add even more vapour through their leaves in a
process known as transpiration.
As warm, moist air rises it cools, and the
vapour condenses into tiny droplets that form
clouds. When the droplets join together and
grow heavy, they fall as precipitation - rain,
sleet, snow or hail - and the cycle begins again.
Key words
evaporation · condensation · precipitation · transpiration
42
Illustration. Drag the handle from the left to reveal the original marks.
No eraser work, no cloning, no white patches.
Sign in to Recovoly and open the AI Restore Studio. New? A free account takes a minute.
A scan, a phone photo or a multi-page PDF - JPG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC and WebP all work.
Brush over scribbles, lasso margin notes, box a block. Leave anything you want to keep.
Set each area to Remove, tap a quick instruction and restore. Compare, then download.
Pen marks wander. The studio gives you a tool for each shape, plus one-tap instructions: Remove handwriting, Remove scribble, Remove ink blot.
Paint straight over a scribble, an underline or a crossed-out word. The eraser trims the edge.
Best for · Scribbles · underlines · strike-throughs
Draw freehand round a margin note, an arrow or a doodle that wanders across the page.
Best for · Margin notes · arrows · doodles
Mark a block of answers, a circled word or a highlighted line in one quick shape.
Best for · Answer blocks · circles · highlighter
Let the studio find handwriting, signatures and damage on the page, then keep only the areas you want.
Best for · Busy pages · first pass
Blue and black ink notes, scribbles and crossings-out.
Yellow, pink or green highlighting soaked into the paper.
Grey notes, sums and underlining - even after a bad rubbing out.
Ticks, crosses, marks and comments from a teacher or editor.
Lines under words, rings round answers, brackets in the margin.
Handwritten comments, questions and page references.
Drawings, stars and arrows from a bored afternoon.
Leaky-pen blots and smudged wet ink over print.
Five steps for every area you mark - the reason a scribble can disappear without taking the sentence with it.
Inside your area, pen strokes are told apart from the printed letters and paper they sit on.
The crop includes the lines above and below, so the typeface, spacing and paper tone are known.
The ink is taken out and any printed letters it covered are reconstructed to match.
The repaired area is matched to the untouched paper around it - no clean white patch.
It goes back through a feathered mask of your shape. Outside it, the scan is original.
Strength per area
Gentle for a light pencil tick, Rebuild for a heavy scribble over text.
Compare & zoom
Slide between original and cleaned and check every rebuilt letter.
Whole PDFs
Clean the pages that need it and save the document back as one PDF.
Whenever the printed page is what you need and the pen is in the way.
Recover a clean worksheet or test master from a filled-in copy when the original file is gone.
Clean up second-hand textbooks and photocopied notes so you can annotate them your way.
Lift readers' underlining and scribbles from scans of borrowed and donated books.
Remove pencilled fingerings and bowings from sheet music scans before sharing a clean part.
Turn a completed form back into a blank template, or tidy your own annotated drafts.
Make a clean reading copy while the annotated master - marginalia and all - is kept as scanned.
A teacher's grade, an approval initial, a reader's note in a rare book - some marks belong on the page. That's why Recovoly never runs a blanket "remove all handwriting" filter. You mark what goes; the rest is left exactly as scanned, down to the pixel.
You mark → removed
Not marked → kept
| What you need | Recovoly | Eraser / clone tool | Scan cleanup filter |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rebuilds printed text under the mark | |||
| Removes coloured ink and highlighter | By hand | Sometimes | |
| Keeps the marks you want to keep | |||
| Matches paper tone - no white patches | With skill | ||
| Rest of the page stays pixel-identical | |||
| Works on pencil, gel, felt-tip and red pen | Varies | ||
| Minutes per page, not an hour | |||
| Multi-page PDF in and out |
Small habits that make the rebuilt text indistinguishable from the original.
Cover the whole stroke plus a few pixels of paper, so no faint edge of ink is left behind.
Remove the scribble and the highlighter as separate areas, each with its own quick instruction.
Several underlines on one line can share a brush area - fewer areas, fewer points.
Write it in the instruction: "Remove the blue pen, keep the printed text and the stamp".
Where dark ink completely hides the print, Rebuild strength gives the AI more freedom to reconstruct.
Colour lets the AI tell blue pen from black print. Greyscale scans make the job much harder.
Use Recovoly on your own study materials, working copies, drafts, forms and book scans. Don't use it to remove signatures, approvals, corrections or official marks from contracts, certificates, legal or financial documents, or anything you will pass off as genuine. That breaks our terms of use and may be illegal.
Log in, open the AI Restore Studio and upload the scan, photo or PDF. Paint over each pen mark with the brush, draw a lasso around margin notes, or box a block of marks. Set each area to Remove, tap a quick instruction such as Remove scribble or Remove handwriting, and press Restore. The marks are removed and the printed text and paper underneath are rebuilt.
It is rebuilt. The AI sees the area with plenty of the page around it, so where a scribble or underline crossed printed words it reconstructs those letters in the same typeface, size and ink. The goal is a clean page that reads as if the pen never touched it.
Yes - only what you mark is removed. You can take out a scribble and a margin note while keeping a highlighter line, a signature, a stamp or any annotation you want to preserve. Everything outside your marked areas stays exactly as scanned.
Ballpoint, gel and felt-tip pen; pencil; highlighter; red-pen corrections; underlines, circles and arrows; ticks and crosses; handwritten margin notes; scribbles and doodles; and ink blots. Use the Remove area type and pick the matching quick instruction, or describe the mark in your own words.
Yes. Highlighter soaks into the paper and sits under the print, so mark the highlighted line and ask to remove the highlighter - the colour is lifted and the text and paper tone are kept.
Yes, for your own materials. Mark the handwritten answers or entries and remove them; the printed questions, lines and boxes are kept. It is a quick way for teachers and offices to recover a clean master from a used copy - see Remove handwriting from documents for a full walkthrough.
You can open a multi-page PDF, mark the pen marks on each page that needs it, and save the whole document back as one PDF. Pages you don't touch are kept exactly as they were.
JPG, PNG, TIFF, HEIC, WebP and more, and PDF. Export at full size as PNG, JPG or PDF, or save the cleaned page to your Recovoly assets.
That is the hardest case, because less of the original print is visible. The AI uses the rest of the line and the page to rebuild it, and it usually reads well. For heavy scribbles over important text, use Rebuild strength and always compare with the original before you rely on it.
Each marked area costs 10 points from your Recovoly balance. Group nearby marks into one area to save points - one brush area can cover several scribbles on the same line. See the pricing page for plans.
It uses the same studio, but this page is about handwriting and pen marks drawn over printed documents - scribbles, notes, underlines, highlighter and corrections. For rubber stamps and seals see Remove stamps from documents, and for stickers, tape and other objects see Document object cleanup.
Don't use Recovoly to remove signatures, approvals, endorsements or official marks from contracts, certificates, legal or financial documents, or anything you will present to someone else as genuine. That breaks our terms of use and may be illegal. Use it on your own working copies, study materials, drafts and forms.
Lift rubber stamps and seals and rebuild the text under them.
Remove stickers, tape, labels and other objects from pages.
Mark any area and restore only that area.
Stains, grime and age marks lifted from whole pages.
Clear filled-in answers from forms and worksheets to get a blank copy.
Plans and point packs for the studio.
Log in, upload a marked-up page and see it clean in minutes.
10 points per area · original always kept · see pricing
