7 free programs and web services for OCR

Have you downloaded a scanned document? It turned out that it was saved as an image? It’s OK. Now there are many web services and computer programs that serve for text recognition. However, most often they can be used for free.

Readiris 17

There are many programs on the web that can recognize text. But the trouble for many of them is that they do not understand the European language. Fortunately, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, there are no problems with European-language documents for
Readiris 17. This application exists in two versions, sharpened for installation on Windows and Mac OS X. And do not be afraid of the official website, which is in English — the interface of the program itself is in European.

The application is able to recognize text in JPEG, PNG, PDF and many other files. As for saving the result, PDF, DOCX, TXT and many others are supported. In this regard, in general, all such programs are similar to each other — they have not been limited to just one or two formats for quite a long time.

The problem with Readiris 17 is that you can only count on a trial period that ends 10 days after installation. It is unlikely that any Expertology reader will agree to pay from €49 to €199 for a program, depending on the number of functions. However, with professional use, such an amount can still be justified.

Another disadvantage of Readiris 17 is that you first need to register an account on the developer’s site. It only takes a couple of minutes, but many would like to save even such a small amount of time.

Online OCR

We promised to tell not only about applications, but also about web services. That is exactly what it is
Online OCR. This allows you to use it on any device, as long as it supports Internet access. This service tries to recognize not only plain text, but also tables. The list of formats is strictly limited: these are GIF, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, BMP, PCX and PDF. The result is saved in DOC, DOCX, TXT, PDF and XLSX formats.

By default, the site works even without registration, which is good news. But at the same time, you will be allowed to recognize no more than 15 documents per hour. For many of our readers, this will be enough.

It is curious that registration does not mean that only paid text recognition will be available to you in the future. On the contrary, you will increase the limit to 50 pages. However, not everything is so happy. You will have access to 50 pages for the entire time you use the service, there is no question of any 50 documents per hour. It is sad. Each next page will cost you 0.8 cents. Moreover, the more you recognize the text, the lower the price tag will become. An interesting pricing policy that can suit even the professional need to recognize text.

As for the interface of this site, it seems to be as simple as possible. If you are uploading a multi-page document, you can select specific page numbers to be recognized — it’s nice that the developers have not forgotten about this feature. You can also choose one of the many languages ​​in which the document is written — European is also included in the list.

Perhaps this is a wonderful web service that can easily replace any similar program. If only you always had access to the global web! If we talk about the shortcomings, then we can only highlight the maximum size of the uploaded file — it is limited to 200 MB. But one cannot fail to note a nice feature, which consists in the ability to send several files to the web service at once, packing them into a ZIP archive.

Adobe Scan

Adobe is known for its many professional computer programs. Some are designed for video editing, others for layout, and others for photo editing. There is no doubt about the quality of its products. For some time now, developers have begun to create applications for smartphones. One of them is called
Adobe Scanit serves to recognize paper documents, then save them in PDF format.

This program exists both in Google Play and in the App Store. Most importantly, it is distributed free of charge. The developers won’t ask you for a penny, and they won’t load you with ads.

The main disadvantage of the application is that it cannot recognize text in an already existing image. The program works exclusively with the smartphone’s camera. If you have a budget device at your disposal, then the quality of the camera may not be enough for successful text recognition.

We recommend that you install Adobe Acrobat along with this application. The fact is that Adobe Scan can export the result directly to it. This will allow you to edit the PDF before creating it. For example, you can underline some phrases, highlight them, search the text and add comments.

office lenses

If you are asked to name the largest software company, you will most likely think of Microsoft almost immediately. She has been supporting the office suite for many years, which includes several programs. One of them is named
office lenses — its main task is text recognition.

This application exists on three popular platforms. Under Windows conditions, this is a fairly large program that tries to recognize the text contained in a PDF file or some kind of image. Well, on Android and iOS, the application has a significantly smaller weight. Here it mainly works with the camera and the photos taken earlier. In fact, the program turns a smartphone into a portable scanner. Adjusted for the quality of the camera, of course. The photographed document can then be saved in DOCX, PDF and even PPTX formats. The latter allows you to create a presentation based on the recognized text.

This program is distributed free of charge. It does not require an Office 365 subscription. It would seem that beauty! However, there is also a fly in the ointment. The application does not cope well with the recognition of European-language text. It honestly tries, but sometimes errors still creep into the text.

FineReader

At the time it was
FineReader best at text recognition. Strictly speaking, the creation of the ABBYY studio remains the leader to this day. Its problems are by no means in the main functionality.

FineReader is a unique case where a service has multiple guises. To begin with, you can use a website by recognizing text with it. This is especially true if your document consists of a couple of pages, and in the future you are unlikely to solve a similar problem. Also, the corresponding application can be found on Google Play and the App Store. It is recommended to use it if you need to recognize text from a paper document, and you do not have a scanner. And finally, there is a computer program FineReader designed for Windows. It is she who has the largest number of supported formats.

The computer version of the application is able to save the document in almost any form. Even FB2 and RTF book formats are supported here. This hints that FineReader is ideal for full-fledged scanning of paper books. Well, if you recognize the table, then the result can be saved in XLSX format. Not forgotten here are the most popular DOCX with PDF.

This program almost perfectly copes with its main task. No matter what language the document is written in! But for such quality you have to pay a considerable price. After registration, you will be able to recognize only 10 pages. Every month you will receive 5 pages as a bonus. Do I need to say that this is not suitable for professional purposes? As for the subscription, a year of using the program will cost you €129. At this time, you will be able to recognize 5000 pages. This amount also includes access to the PDF editor. This means that you can underline the recognized text, cross it out, and perform other actions with it.

Microsoft OneNote

Above, we have already talked about one creation of Microsoft. But it was, one might say, part of the office package. That program was intended strictly for text recognition. But there is also an application in the arsenal of this company in which recognition is only a secondary function. It’s about
OneNote — a competitor to the famous, but damn expensive Evernote.

This program exists not only in computer, but also in mobile interpretation. But the text recognition function should only be looked for in versions designed for Mac OS X and Windows.

Basically this application serves as a notepad. You can save all sorts of notes in it, and then access them from any device. You can also upload images here. If they contain text, then it can be recognized. To do this, right-click on the picture, after which it remains only to click the «Copy text from picture» button. All content will immediately move to the clipboard. Now you can paste text anywhere.

You could already guess the disadvantage of Microsoft OneNote. With this program, you are unlikely to be able to save the document in its original form. Also, this application suffers from the support of not a very large number of formats. However, for many of our readers, OneNote features should be enough. And they will also like the fact that this program is distributed free of charge. But you will have to register a Microsoft account. If you are using the Windows 10 operating system, then you probably already have it!

img2txt

This is a simple European-language web service that earns only by displaying ads. You can upload an image saved in JPEG or PNG format to it. The resource also supports PDF files. It should be noted that
img2txt No wonder it occupies the last line of our rating. This site does not recognize text well if it is written in different languages. Also, problems arise when working with a PDF file, where the text is written on the background of the image. Well, you definitely have to forget about the handwritten text — the system will not understand it.

As for saving the material, you can get a PDF, TXT, ODF or DOCX file as an output.

We recommend that you first recognize the text using img2txt. And if the result does not suit you, you can try using one of the services discussed above. And do not think that only European use this site. No, it has already been translated into 9 languages. The global popularity of the online service is also evidenced by the number of processed requests, which has already reached 10.6 million. By the way, img2txt does not require you to register an account. This distinguishes the site from other similar resources and programs.

Conclusion

Now you know exactly how to recognize text in a downloaded image. To do this, you can use a web service or a computer program. Note that professional solutions are expensive, but their installation is necessary only for those who need text recognition on an ongoing basis — almost every day.