OCR
Short for Optical Character Recognition or optical character reader, OCR is taking an image of letters or typed text and converting it into data the computer understands. A good example is companies and libraries taking physical copies of books, magazines, or old printed material and using OCR to put them onto computers. While far from perfect, OCR is currently the best method of digitizing typed pages of text.
Methods of input
Data are generally passed to the computer using a scanner or other hardware device, like a digital camera. Some computer fax applications use OCR to transform incoming faxes from graphics files into word processing documents.
Examples of OCR software and services
Free OCR services and programs
There are free OCR solutions that allow you to convert an image or PDF (Portable Document Format) into text. Below are links to some of our favorite solutions.
- Online OCR - online free solution.
- NAPS2 - open source software for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Using AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools like ChatGPT you can upload an image and ask it to convert the image into text.
Commercial OCR programs
There are several OCR programs for computers available today from companies like ABBYY. Below are links to our affiliate links with Amazon, where you can find all programs available for purchase.
AAS, Computer acronyms, Handwriting recognition, Image processing, Pattern recognition, Reader, ReCAPTCHA, Scanner terms, TET, TLA