If we have an image, be it a photograph or a scanned document, the text that is included becomes part of that image like any other element within it. In the event that we need to extract that text to be able to edit it, it will be necessary to use an OCR program. These will take care of recognize the text and transform them in a string of characters, being able to be Unicode or ASCII. Subsequently, they must copy this string to an editing program that will be in charge of being able to work with it, with the consequent saving of time by not having to type it.
These programs are not only capable of recognizing individual characters, but are also capable of recognizing the style and format in which the text is written. Therefore, it is important to note that many of these OCR programs include among their features the technology needed to read and extract information that is included in the sound files. For example, there are musicians who choose to use OCR to be able to read the characters of a score, so the possibilities of these programs are very wide.
Free OCR programs
Although in the past, optical character recognition was an advanced technology, and quite expensive, today we can use it completely free of charge thanks to a large number of public programs like the ones we are going to see here.
simpleOCR
This is the case of , a free proposal of this type that you can use on your desktop computer. It is one of the best-known solutions of this type and that has been with us for a good number of years. The program uses its own function that tries to do the best character recognitioneven if the writing is somewhat flawed.
It must be said that the program recognizes some 120,000 words, a figure that we can increase ourselves by adding new ones. In addition, it is characterized by being a fast tool in the process and can even deal with documents in batches, which will save us time.
sodaPDF
Continuing in the line of applications of this type, we also find . This is a OCR software that is responsible for extracting the text of any file in Pdf format and make it editable. To do this, all we have to do is drag the corresponding file to the program’s interface to start the conversion process, something that only takes a few seconds.
If we do not want to download software to our PC, we can also resort to the online version, which we can use from the browser.
FreeOCR
Another of the free proposals that we are going to talk about in these lines is , a software for Windows that hardly consumes resources. It has been designed so that we can identify the texts contained in images and files in PDF format, and is characterized by how fast it carries out the process.
Of course, the internal technology that it uses has many errors when it comes to recognizing handwriting, so it better recognizes the characters of a machine. However, this represents a good proposition if we need a program at zero cost to recognize the texts of any photo or PDF and make it editable.
Tesseract
Tesseract started working in 1995 as a free project. However, since then, it has managed to grow to become one of the best digital optical character recognition tools. This software is completely free and open source, so it is common to see it included in many free programs and OCR websites.
Normally, this application can be a bit complicated to use. It lacks an interface, so we must use it from the terminal, or from a CMD window. However, its accurate results make it worth investing time to familiarize ourselves with this interface.
We can find an installation and use guide, as well as its download, . This app is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.
GImageReader
We have said that the main problem with Tesseract is that it must be used from a terminal. This is where GImageReader comes into play. This is a frontend, or interface, that uses this library and allows us to take advantage of its virtues in a much simpler and more intuitive way, that is, from a window. We will have all its configuration and adjustment options within reach of our mouse.
GImageReader is available for Windows and Linux, and we can download the .
Free OCR to Word
Although we leave open source programs a bit aside, another option that we must also take into account is Free OCR to Word. This software allows us to recognize characters from different file formats, such as JPG, JPEG, PSD, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP, among others. It will also allow us to import them into a Word document so that, by doing so, we can already have them fully editable and avoid the task of having to rewrite the documents.
We can download this free application.
onlineOCR
We are going to continue with this selection of programs to get into text of a PDF or image with this other interesting proposal. The first thing we must do to take advantage of the benefits that it presents to us is to access its official website, specifically . Once here, what we do is load the content we want to work with. As we can see in the user interface that we find, in this proposal we have the possibility of working with PDS files, and images of the most common formats.
We achieve this through the File button, to later select the language in which the text we want to extract is located. At the same time we have to indicate, in the following drop-down list, the output document that we need to obtain in this case. It can be a DOCX of Word, an XLSX of Excel, or just plain text in a txt file. Once the parameters that we have mentioned have been defined, to finish it is enough that we click on the Convert button.
Boxoft Free OCR
This is completely free software with which we can extract text from all kinds of images. The program will be in charge of analyzing texts with several columns and is capable of admitting several languages, among which are Spanish, English, French, German, etc. With it we can scan our paper documents and then the ORC content of the scanned files in editable text immediately. It has two windows, one next to the other, to be able to edit OCR text intuitively within the same interface (cut, copy, paste, select, etc). Once the OCR text is finished it can be saved as a TXT or ZIP file.
We can download Boxoft Free OCR for free from
Free OCR Software (a9t9)
An interesting open source option that works both via the web and through its own application is Free OCR Software. The character recognition system it uses is quite complete and allows it to recognize a large number of languages. It allows us to manually upload the images or PDF files of which we want to recognize the text or use a web link where the file is located.
Unlike other websites, this website allows us to download the resulting file in PDF format. But, in addition, it also allows us to copy the plain text from the text box where it is displayed after analyzing the file. We can use this platform to recognize characters completely free of charge through the following .
Microsoft OneNote
Sometimes it is not necessary to resort to third-party applications to perform certain functions, functions that are available in Windows or that are directly offered to us by Microsoft for free through one of its applications. An example of this can be found in Microsoft’s OneNote notes application. This application, ideal for organizing work, studies or household chores, also includes a function that allows us to recognize text from images.
To recognize the text of an image through OneNote, we just have to add the image to the note wherever we want and, later, click on the right button to select the Copy text from image option from the contextual menu. At that moment, the text of the image will be available on the clipboard and we will be able to copy it in any application to edit it or save it as an editable document.
Microsoft OneNote is available for free for download through the Microsoft Store if we have uninstalled it from our computer since it is included natively on all Windows 10 and Windows 11 computers. If we have deleted it from our computer to release space, we can re-download through the following link. The application does not limit access to additional features through the Microsoft 365 subscription that gives us access to all Office applications.
Professional OCR programs
If the previous options give us problems and have many errors, then it is better to opt for one of these professional alternatives, since they are much more accurate when it comes to recognizing text.
ABBYY Fine Reader
ABBYY Fine Reader is an OCR application that will allow us to automatically recognize all the characters in an image or a PDF document. By doing so, it will allow us to extract and copy them to work with them as if they were plain text. This is one of the oldest and most effective tools within this type of software, offering a very high success rate and compatibility with more than 190 text languages.
In addition to having its own window, it integrates with Microsoft Word so that if we scan a document, we can automatically have it as text in Microsoft’s word processor.
Although it is probably the best OCR program we can find, this is , and not exactly cheap, since its most basic license is around 200 euros. Therefore, if we are looking for a program that allows us to convert our scans to text, and we can assume a certain range of errors, we can try any of the other free alternatives.
Readiris 17
Readiris is more of a software to edit and layout all kinds of documents, especially in PDF format. However, this program includes, among its many functions, an OCR technology that will allow us to recognize multiple characters and convert them to editable text format. The optical recognition engine of this program is very powerful and has very high levels of precision.
Of course, we must bear in mind that we are dealing with paid software. We can download a trial version of this software.
nanonets
The Nanonets solution makes available to us to recognize the text of images uses artificial intelligence to recognize the characters of a document in image format of any type of document, be it a form, an identification or visit card, payroll, invoice or any other type of document.
The application allows us to create workflows to extract only certain information depending on the type of…
Facebook Comments
Disqus