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Digitalization has certainly made it easier for us to connect with people to capture things and to search for things. Digitized things are always easy to use we can edit digital images in image editing software such as Photoshop. Digital documents can be edited in MS Word. But what if we want to edit, or copy something that’s already printed. It was always required to have software which can extract text from images and we should be thankful to the tech that we can now extract text from images using OCR technology. Let’s us get an idea that what is OCR technology and which are the best software to extract text from images.
FineReader for Mac Scanning, text recognition and conversion to editable formats. Comparator Compare two versions of a document to detect text differences. OCR, ICR, OMR, OBR, and document imaging SDK. Edit, convert, and compare PDFs and scans with PDF and OCR software. OCR, ICR, OMR, OBR, and document capture to ERP and ECM systems.
What is OCR?
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. This technology helps you to convert different type of digital captures such as Photos scanned documents or PDF files to a searchable or editable data.
Best OCR Software to Extract Text from Images:
1. ABBYY FineReader:
ABBYY Fine Reader is an award-winning OCR software which works perfectly with text on e-books, scans, digital photographs. You can use this software for home or office for easy document creation. Its speed and accuracy eliminates the process of retyping and saves a lot of time. The software is really a perfect pick for those who are required to convert images to text very often.
Also Read:7 Best Exif Data Remover & Editor For Mac 2018
2. Online OCR.net:
If you are looking for a free tool to convert text on pictures to word file using OCR then you must try onlineocr.net it is a web based tool thus you will not need to spend time to download and install a software though you may require compromising a little with accuracy and speed of conversion. All and all we can say that online OCR is best for those who are occasionally required to convert images to text.
3. Soda PDF Anywhere:
Here is another software to extract text from image online. This software is having both web version and downloadable version. If you will go for the web version you can use your purchase on any device from anywhere. The software works well for both Windows and Mac and allows you to sync your documents over Google Drive, Dropbox or Evernote. You can go for a free trial before making a purchase. Application is having different editions for personal and business purpose.
4. Free OCR:
If you are in the search of OCR software free download which is available for your computer then you can try your luck with Free OCR. Software takes approximately 10 MB on your hard disk and is very simple to use. Because of low accuracy level you may require having images scanned in high quality. The version of software was last updated long back so you will miss some extra user-friendly buttons or options but in nutshell the application is an amazing lightweight tool if your purpose is short term.
Also Read: Best Batch Image Resizer for Mac
5. SimpleOCR:
Simple OCR is less expensive yet powerful tool to convert text images to documents. Tool is very much accurate to convert handwritten text on images to word. The best part about this software is that it is having an inbuilt Spell check which helps you to correct spelling mistakes while converting an image or a handwritten piece to a document. The application supports almost all the major image formats so we can say that it is one of the best OCR software 2018. You can also go for the free trial before making a purchase.
So, these were 10 best OCR software to extract text from images. They really save a lot of human effort with the help of these application you can convert handwritten notes to some well-organized documents and keep them forever not only this some of these applications allow you to spell check or grammar check while you are converting another advantage of using an OCR application is that you can easily search for text in images. Tech has really changed the world a lot and continuously we are observing new inventions which are changing our life.
Gone are the days when you had to type every single word manually to edit or convert image files to editable text. I really used to hate it when there were no software to extract text from images like from scanned images or diagrams. We had to write down the text manually. But technology has made our life more easier in many ways. As a result, today we have a huge list of OCR softwares which help us in converting image files to editable text files.
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, those software which have the ability to convert PNG, jpg, TIFF images or any other image file that contains text to editable text. OCR software are blessing for us. They really make our work quick and comfortable.
These software are powerful tools and are available for many devices. For Windows and Mac there are a number of OCR softwares available but it’s very important to know which is good one. To make your decision-making process a little easy, I’m gonna tell you about some great OCR softwares for Windows and Mac. These Top 7 free OCR software for Windows & Mac are some of the best OCR software and the best thing is that these applications are free to download.
So, let’s have a look at these softwares details and you can download your favorite one.
1. FreeOCR
FreeOCR is one of the best Optical Character recognition software. It is a great tool which lets you to convert any image file that contains text to editable text format in no time. The application includes Windows Tesseract therefore you need not to download any extra file.
FreeOCR supports many image formats like PNG, jpg, TIFF images etc. Its clean and easy to use interface gives to best experience to extract text rom image file. The extracting text process is really quick and you can get extracted text within few seconds.
To extract text rom image file just open the file and click OCR and you work will be done with these two clicks only. You can also select specific area if you want to extract text only from there. FreeOCR is free and you can download it rom here.
2. TopOCR
TopOCR is another great optical character recognition (OCR) software. You can covert jpg, tiff , gif, bmp etc. to text files using this software. It lets you change the image settings like brightness, contrast, color, sharpen etc. to enhance the readability of the image so that the output text files comes with high accuracy. You can also set camera filter. The converted files can be saved in many formats such as HTML, TXT, RTF and many more. TopOCR also supports 11 languages.
Converting image files is very easy process. You only need to open or scan the image. Next step is to click OCR tab present in the menu bar. The software contains two windows , one for image and the second one is for text.
3. OnlineOCR.net
OnlineOCR is a free internet service which enables you to convert image files containing text to text files. Benefit of this is you do not need to download and install any software to your system. You only need to browse OnlineOCR.net and work on it without spending money. It can convert camera captured images, scanned documents and so on.
To convert files you need to import files, select language and output format, at last click “convert” button. You can save the output in PDF, Excel, Text, Word and HTML format. One user can only convert 25 pages. You also need to sign up and login before performing any function.
4. SimpleOCR
SimpleOCR is a freeware which helps you convert image files to text files. You can scan the files you want to convert or you can open the specific image(GIF, TIFF, BMP and many more )to convert it to text files. There is also in-built spell-checker in the software. The software is available or free but if you want to work on hand-writing documents then trial version is only for 14 days, after the limited period of time you will need to purchase it.
Accuracy of SimpleOCR’s output is not that good. It also doesn’t support columns, table and image format.Negative point is that it doesn’t support PDF file format.
5. gImageReader
gImageReader is easy to use front end OCR software. Its interface is user-friendly and interactive. This tool can easily extract text from the images which contain some text in them. You can scan or directly open the desired file to convert it. Or you can simply take screenshot of the image. Conversion process is quite fast. The procedure to extract text is very simple.
First you need to open the file you want to extract text from. Next click “Autodetect layout” or you simply right-click on the image and select “Recognise to clipboard” and you text will be copied to the clipboard. You can also select a specific area by dragging mouse to extract text only from selected area. Overall gImageReader is a nice OCR tool which is available for free to download.
6. Microsoft OneNote
Microsot OneNote is a great note-making application. Not only note-making but it is also excellent in extracting text from images. Text extraction from images using this application is very simple and easy. Just insert the files using Insert option, once the file is opened right-click on the image and select Copy text from picture option, this is all you need to do and the text will be copied to the clipboard. However, it is not able to extract text from complicated images with tables and sections.
Microsoft OneNote is available for Windows 10, 8, 7 and vista, Mac.
7. Wondershare PDFelement
Wondershare PDFelement is all-in-one desktop software which helps you to convert PDF files to editable text. You can convert any PDF file to Microsoft word, Powerpoint, Excel format conveniently. The software contains in-built image enhancement tool which improves the image’s readability. It also lets you to add objects. image and comments. The software is also able to merge or split multiple PDF files.
You can also secure your files by setting password. You can set password to the specific file so that no one else can open your confidential files. The output quality generated by Wondershare PDFelement is average. It is all free to download.
So, these were some free OCR softwares. I hope the list of Top 7 free OCR software for Windows & Mac helped you in some ways. Comment below the OCR software you liked most. And if you know about other OCR application, please mention in the comment box.