7 best free OCR apps that convert images to text

When you want to convert printed or handwritten text into a digital copy, you don’t have to do it manually. You don’t even have to spend a fortune on professional tools. Quantrimang.com will show you 7 best OCR software to help convert images to text for free.

Microsoft OneNote has advanced OCR functionality that works on both photos and handwritten notes.

  • Drag the saved scan or photo into OneNote. You can also use OneNote to crop a portion of the screen or an image and then include it in OneNote.
  • Right click on the inserted picture and select Copy Text from Picture. The copied optically recognized text goes to the clipboard and you can now paste it back into OneNote or into any program like Word or Notepad.
Select Copy Text from Picture
Select Copy Text from Picture

OneNote can also extract text from a multi-page printout with one click. Insert a multipage printout in OneNote and then right-click the currently selected page.

  • Click Copy Text from this Page of the Printout to get only the text from this selected page.
  • Click Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout to copy text from all pages in one go, as you can see below.
Choose Copy Text from this Page of the Printout or Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout
Choose Copy Text from this Page of the Printout or Copy Text from All the Pages of the Printout

Please note that the accuracy of OCR also depends on the quality of the image. That’s why optical handwriting recognition is still a bit poor compared to OneNote and other OCR software on the market. However, it is one of the main features of OneNote that you should use whenever you get the chance.

SimpleOCR
SimpleOCR

Problems encountered with handwriting recognition using Microsoft tools can be solved with SimpleOCR. But the software only offers handwriting recognition as a 14-day free trial. Even so, machine print recognition does not have any limitations.

See more:  3 things to know about how to connect the printer to the computer

The software is quite complicated and seems outdated because it hasn’t been updated since version 3.1, but you can still try it because of its simplicity.

  • Set up SimpleOCR to read directly from the scanner or by adding a page (JPG, TIFF, BMP formats).
  • SimpleOCR provides some control over the conversion through text selection, image selection, and text skip features.
  • The conversion to text feature takes this to the validation stage; Users can correct errors in the converted text using the built-in spell checker.
  • The converted file can be saved in DOC or TXT format.

SimpleOCR is good for normal text, but this program’s handling of multi-column layouts will disappoint you. Overall, the conversion accuracy with Microsoft tools is significantly better than SimpleOCR.

Photo Scan
Photo Scan

Photo Scan is a free Windows 10 OCR app that you can download from the Microsoft Store. Created by Define Studios, this app is a combination of an OCR scanner and a QR code reader.

Point the app at an image or file printout. You can also use your PC’s webcam to provide the application with images for scanning. Unlike some of the other tools in this article, Photo Scan does not work with PDF files. The recognized text is displayed in an adjacent window.

The text-to-speech feature is a highlight. Click the speaker icon and the app will read aloud what it just scanned.

Photo Scan doesn’t work really well with handwritten text, but print recognition is pretty good. When everything is done, you can save the OCR text in many formats like Text, HTML, Rich Text, XML, Log, etc..

See more:  How to create an event in Gmail
(a9t9) Free OCR
(a9t9) Free OCR

The software (a9t9) Free OCR is a UWP (Universal Windows Platform) application. So you can use it with any Windows device you own. There is also an online equivalent OCR version provided by the same API.

(a9t9) supports 21 languages ​​to parse images and PDF to text. The app is also free to use and supports ads that can be removed with an in-app purchase. Like most free OCR programs, (a9t9) Free OCR works better with printed documents than handwritten text.

Capture2Text
Capture2Text

Capture2Text is free OCR software for Windows that gives you keyboard shortcuts to quickly OCR anything on the screen. Capture2Text also does not require installation on a computer.

Use default keyboard shortcuts Win + Q to activate the OCR process. You can then use the mouse to select the part you want to capture. Press Enter to enable optical character recognition. The captured and converted text will appear in a pop-up window and by default will also be available in the clipboard.

Capture2Text uses Google’s OCR engine and supports over 100 languages. It uses Google Translate to convert captured text to other languages. Check the menu in the Windows toolbar to access Settings, enable and disable clipboard saving, or switch the default OCR language.

Easy Screen OCR
Easy Screen OCR

Easy Screen OCR is not free. But the article mentions it here because the tool is fast and convenient. You can also use it for free up to 20 times without registration.

The software works from the system tray or the taskbar. You can capture text or upload to PDF files (PDF files are limited to less than 15 pages or 50MB).

See more:  How to add a loved one on the Electronic Health Book

To toggle the text on the desktop, right-click the icon Easy Screen OCR and choose Capture from the menu. Capture any image, web page, video, document or something else on the screen by dragging the mouse pointer. Easy Screen OCR will then display a dialog with 3 tabs. Tab Screenshots gives you a preview of the captured text. Click the button OCR to read text from images. Optically converted text can now be copied from the tab Text of the dialog box.

You can set the recognition language for OCR in the Preferences of the software. More than 100 languages ​​are supported, as the software uses Google’s OCR engine.

If you don’t have a computer available, try the OCR power of Google Drive. Google Docs has a built-in OCR program that can recognize text in JPEG, PNG, GIF, and PDF files. But all files must be 2MB or less and the text must be 10 pixels or more.

Google Drive can also automatically detect languages ​​in scanned files, although accuracy with non-Latin characters may not be as high.

Refer: How to convert images to text using Google Drive for details.

If you are using an Android device, please refer to the article: 5 best Android OCR apps for extracting text from photos to find yourself the right choice!

Source link: 7 best free OCR apps that convert images to text
– https://techtipsnreview.com/

, , , , ,

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *