PDF & photo scanning: what's new
Flat's sheet music scanning, powered by optical music recognition (OMR), keeps getting better. We improve it continuously; this page records only the major updates to PDF and photo import, newest first.
Looking for how scanning works and which notations are supported? See Scan and import sheet music from a PDF or photo.
June 15, 2026
A more accurate model
Every PDF and photo import is now processed by Flat's own in-house model. This release is a major new version focused on transcription accuracy: musical correctness (the notes, rhythms, ties, and accidentals that determine whether a score is right) improves across every test set, with the largest gains in:
| Notation | Improvement |
|---|---|
| Dynamics | +39% |
| Fermatas, articulations, ties, accidentals | +30 to 37% |
| Note durations | +22% |
| Slurs, dotted notes, rests, staff and voice assignment | +14 to 20% |
Text, dynamics, and layout placement are also more precise: lyrics, chord names, and dynamics attach more reliably to the correct notes, including on complex layouts such as piano grand staves and parts with clef changes.
June 1, 2026
Our own AI model starts rolling out
We're rolling out Flat's own AI model for PDF and photo import, designed and trained in-house to replace the third-party engine used at launch. Owning the technology end to end lets us push accuracy further, broaden what we recognize, ship improvements far faster, and align results with Flat's own notation format so imports fit naturally into the rest of the product. This first release already reads much more of your music:
Broader notation coverage. Newly recognized:
- Chord symbols, properly encoded with their musical meaning as editable chords, not just plain text
- Measure repeats and rhythm slashes
- Tempo and metronome markings (with BPM)
Lyrics and text in more languages. Lyrics, rehearsal marks, and other text are recognized in Latin-script languages by default, plus Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.
Truer to the original layout. Imports now follow the source score's layout much more closely, matching the number of measures per line, systems per page, and overall structure. This makes a real difference on large, complex scores such as orchestral works and multi-staff instruments like piano. It also supports more page formats, including landscape pages that weren't supported before.
September 1, 2025
PDF import launches
PDF import is now available, letting you turn a PDF of sheet music into an editable score. It's powered by third-party optical music recognition technology.