Convert image to text using free online OCR software
Posted on June 28, 2009 at 5:52 am
Have a PDF document or an image that you would like to convert to text? Now will everything being digital, you might end up getting a document from someone that is in TIFF or PDF format, but that you would have preferred in Word or Text format so you can edit it.
Of course, you could always purchase OCR software, but here at OTT, we always try to find ways to do everything for free! That’s where a free online OCR service comes in handy.
Free OCR is a nitfy little web service that everyone should bookmark because you never know when you’ll need it.
Basically, you upload a PDF or image file (JPG, TIFF, BMP) from your computer and Free OCR will process the document/image within a few seconds and spit it back out in plain text format.
The max file size is currently 2 MB. You don’t have to do any pre-processing to your images except for making sure it is not skewed right or left. If it is, go ahead and deskew it before uploading.
Also, if there is more than one column in your image, it will convert it all to one column. However, they are creating a layout engine that will recognize more complex documents in the future.
The recommended DPI for the images is 150, but if you have a file that is a lower DPI, go ahead and try it anyway to see if it works.
The only major limitation right now is that it can convert only the first page of a PDF document and that’s it! So if you have more than one page, you’ll only get the first page. In the future, you will be able to process up to 10 pages.
The cool feature, though, is that it also support six languages including German, French, Italian, Dutch and Spanish.
Overall, the OCR results were very good on cleanly printed PDF and image files. Obviously, if I tried a lower resolution scanned document, it didn’t catch everything, but still the results were impressive for a free online service!
Give it a shot and see how it works for you. Overall, it’s a really useful tool if you ever need a free online OCR service for something simple. Enjoy! {via gHacks}
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Great idea, horrible results.
I’ve been using the wonderful OCR tool that comes packaged with the Office Imaging tool, until it stopped working for some reason – so I’m on the lookout for a replacement (if I can’t fix it).
But this free tool here doesn’t do the job. I uploaded a 4 page tiff – got just one page back that one illegible.
Thanks so much! Just what I needed!
OCR Terminal (www.ocrterminal.com) does a good job with accuracy. 20 free pages a month but requires sign -up to use.
Yikes. converted a scanned page, clean copy. got gobbledygook in return.
Interesting, but it appears to be just a simple wrapper around Tesseract.
CVISION actually has a really good OCR that you can use online for free. http://www.cvisiontech.com/online-conversion/general/main.html It’s simple and easy to use.
It is not absolutely accurate with files when scanning in pdf format. Converting a file at 1600 dpi ensures high resolution, but the resulting text from the conversion had some absurd characters in it.
Dear computer guy,
Your intention is great, but this site cannot do OCR properly. To do real OCR, you need real software. I’ve never seen a good one online.
With kind regards,
Harry
Another site that I know if is OnlineOCR, onlineocr.net. You can upload PDF files, images, etc and it will extract the text using OCR. Even supports 28 different languages. Try it
I really liked http://www.onlinedocumentconversion.com .. You can upload PDF, scanned images like JPG and TIF and the output quality is awesome… It’s simple and easy to use.
Whether you convert online or OCR getting 100% accuracy is simply not possible 100% of time. Thats why operators correct manually all your inaccurately converted documents at onlinedocumentconversion.com whenever you want them to.
Excellent service, thank you! Online OCR is pretty good nowadays.
This didn’t convert my PDF file to text properly. Is there any other more reliable OCR software or website I can use to convert this into text?
Another good online OCR service is freeocr.com. You can try it out if the others are not working so well.
I have also noticed, conversions of OCR are not correct and converted document has to be manually edited. I think Free OCR services are therefore not complete in themselves have to be complemented by manual inputs.
tenho docs digitalizados como doc do word e não consigo converter para pdf, pois ele é superior ao minimo estabelecido por conta da digitalização…o que devo fazer para transformar esses textos digitalizados em pdf… ele ultrapassa 6 MB…estou perdida e nao sei transformar. existe uma opção????
i need to translate a scanned afrikaans document into english….need online ocr to id afrikaans. pls help!!!!!!!!!
I’m guessing this OCR software can only convert printed text and not handwritten text from an image to text? Like I scanned a letter written in hand and want to convert it to text in Word?
Is there a professional service that I can pay to get this done? I am willing to pay for good OCR. I have an image and it must be converted to text, actually it’s 100 pages. Please help!
This OCR tool is almost perfect, some symbols were not converted properly, but everything else was good. Thanks.
NO OCR in this planet can guarantee 100% accuracy (unless of course original is in excellent quality), which means you certainly need to correct errors in converted documents most of the time either yourselves or take help.
OCRs can not convert every document 100%. You must make sure your converted document is proof read and edited properly, if you don’t do that you can lose heavily specially if thats an important document .
Has any one tried converttoword.com
duplicate of onlinedocumentconversion.com
What I like most about this site is:
1) Its online 24×7
2) Its quick and instant
3) Small payments makes it very easy.
4) Its supported by people, I always have some difficulty or another in conversions and though mistakes are trivial but help from this place makes it awesome.
5) Being a paid site is safe and secure, its also Free from viruses and malwares rampant these days.
I tried but the website won’t let me select a file to upload.