The purpose of open source OCR is to ease the process of scanning text into an editable document. Open source OCR does this by converting image files into editable doc files. These programs convert scanned pages into text that can be edited on your computer.
Open source stands for free software that you can share, modify and distribute with others under the guidelines of the open source license. Here are the top free open source Ocr softwares available now.
Importance of OCR
Optical character recognition (OCR) plays an important role in transforming printed materials into digital text files. These digital files can be very helpful to kids and adults who have trouble reading. That’s because digital text can be used with software programs that support reading in a variety of ways.
OCR was first introduced in the 1990s. Fast-forward to today, and you’ll find OCR built into the software of many programs and devices, including some computers, tablets, phones, and printers. Many of these devices can automatically convert a scanned or photographed document into digital text.
But before we dig deeper into OCR, let’s talk a bit more about the digital text.
Digital text is one of several formats that make printed information accessible to more people. (Other formats include audio, large print, and Braille.) Digital text is especially helpful for struggling readers, including those who have learning differences such as dyslexia. The digital format makes it possible for readers to see words on a screen and hear them read aloud at the same time. This provides more ways to engage with the information. It can also help kids develop independent reading skills.
What’s the connection between something printed on paper, digital text, and OCR? One way to convert printed material to digital material is by using a scanner. The scanner creates a photo of the printed material. This photo, often called an image, can be displayed on a device that has a screen.
But scanning is only the first step. The photo on its own won’t enable software programs to highlight words or add other options that can assist your daughter with reading. This is where OCR comes in.
OCR “looks” at the photo (this is why its name begins with “optical”) and recognizes the shapes of the different letters, numbers, and other characters. It uses character recognition to convert the photo of the document into a text file. In many cases, the digital version will maintain the “look and feel” of the original.
OCR makes it possible to make changes to the digital text. What can be done with the digital text depends on which reading software you’re using. Common options include:
- Highlighting words, sentences or paragraphs
- Speaking words aloud using text-to-speech
- Changing the colors and the size of text
- Placing digital “bookmarks” that enable users to move around within the text (such as moving directly from the Table of Contents to Chapter Four)
In essence, OCR lets you make changes to the scanned document and maneuver from place to place within it—just as you can with any text document on your computer.
Let’s say your daughter has a homework sheet that she’s struggling to read. You could scan and transform the homework sheet into digital text. You can learn how to do this by watching tutorials on YouTube. (Enter the term “optical character recognition” in the search box.) Once you convert the sheet into a digital file, she can use the tools on her computer to assist her with reading it.
But before she dives in, there’s one more thing you need to do. Closely review the entire document and correct any errors that the OCR software might have made. This can take a lot of time and effort if you’re scanning a long document. But it’s an important step in the process. Without such a review, the digital file may not be all that useful to your child.
It’s also a good idea to see if someone else has already created a digital version. For example, Bookshare and Learning Ally have large libraries of books and other materials that have been transformed into digital text and/or audio formats. These texts are “cleaned up” and ready to use.
OneNote
One Note is the first OCR software for Windows 10 that you have to choose for whenever it comes to saving all the documents as your soft copies though. However, Windows has actually built this Microsoft One Note which is actually built for note taking only. You need to know that there is also an additional feature too, which mainly works for OCR alone.
Well, it is essential that you need to copy and also paste the picture within the scanned documents though over the Note. Well, when you will click over then right-click over the image, and this feature is known as “Copy text from Picture” though. It would be pretty much better if you could try and wait for more time for pasting it again.
So, the final say on this particular OCR software would be the best image to word converter online that you can opt for though. It helps for effortless scanning and printed documents and filed, and it opts for very much inaccurate too.
Google Drive
Google Drive is another popular free OCR software online that would be pretty much great for extracting text from images online too. Google Drive is just the best OCR software that would be so very great for using it over converting papers and documents to the texts and prints or even to the scanned documents though.
It provides the most natural and easiest way to look for the scanned documents to the editable one for sure. However, you need to know that Google Drive is very much safe as it is a known brand as well. Also, Google Keep is just the best one that we could be opting for scanning notes and documents, though. Here is the procedure,
- On Google Drive, Right-click on the desired image.
- Click “Open with” and then “Google Docs“
- After that, the image file will be converted to a Google Doc.
In fact, this particular Google Keep also has a feature of OCR which is perfect for any kind of business print and card printing as well. You can upload the image to Google Drive, and that’s the best feature that one could get and avail within this particular OCR software too.
SimpleOCR
Simple OCR is one such best and free OCR scanning software for Windows 10, which is the best one for converting the papers to scanned documents though. This particular OCR and document are from simple software as well. This mainly has the whole suite of management that is good for file management too.
However, it also has got file scanning and indexing as well. This is built in the software that is developed with the best feature for character identification and recognition even of the handwritten papers and documents as well. The excellent reader OCR process is another just feature that is available in the documents that will be best for identification of figuring the text though.
FreeOCR
Free OCR is the best one for opting this prevalent one for recognition of the OCR app for sure, specially made for Windows though. It has also got Google’s Optical Recognition, which is the best feature within the free OCR software though. This particular feature is also known as the Tesseract.
The UI feature is perfect and makes the best sense of using the app or the software for sure. Also, you can also get the panes into divisions which are especially for Input and Output images as well. You can also use it to upload the PDF, or even you can continue to opt for converting the picture as well. You can also use for multiple batch processes too which would be great for saving the papers to scanned documents.
There are many such controls and features apart from these particularly mentioned ones as well. It is very much fast and secure to use, though.
Photo Scan
Photo Scan is another such free OCR software for pdf that is perfect and pretty much beneficial for scanning and printing texts as well. The OCR text scanner for PC is the best feature and the characteristics that would be perfect for scanning all the documents as well.
Photo scan has also got a whole suite of file and scanning management for sure. The OCR conversion would be particularly comfortable and straightforward for converting the documents too. Multiple export choices, bulk conversion, and cloud services are available too.
SimpleOCR
The problem I was having with handwriting recognition using Microsoft tools could have been solved by SimpleOCR. But the software offers handwriting recognition only as a 14-day free trial. Machine print recognition though does not have any restrictions.
The software is clunky and looks outdated as it hasn’t been updated since version 3.1, but you can still try it out for its simplicity.
- Set it up to read directly from a scanner or by adding a page (JPG, TIFF, BMP formats).
- SimpleOCR offers some control over the conversion through text selection, image selection and text ignore features.
- Conversion to text takes the process into a validation stage; a user can correct discrepancies in the converted text using an in-built spell-checker.
- The converted file can be saved to a DOC or TXT format.
SimpleOCR was fine with normal text, but its handling of multi-column layouts was a disappointment. In my opinion, the conversion accuracy of the Microsoft tools was considerably better than SimpleOCR.
Download: SimpleOCR for Windows (Free, paid versions available)
Photo Scan
Photo Scan is a free Windows 10 OCR app you can download from the Microsoft Store. Created by Define Studios, the app is an OCR scanner and a QR code reader rolled into one.
Point the app to an image or a file printout. You can also use your PC’s webcam to give it an image to look at. Unlike several other tools in this article, Photo Scan doesn’t work with PDF files. The recognized text is displayed in an adjacent window.
The text to speech feature is a highlight. Click the speaker icon and the app will read aloud what it just scanned.
It’s not great with handwritten text, but printed text recognition was adequate. When everything is done, you can save the OCR text in multiple formats like Text, HTML, Rich Text, XML, Log format etc.
Download: Photo Scan (Free, in-app purchase)
Free OCR Windows App
(a9t9) Free OCR software is a Universal Windows Platform app. So you can use it with any Windows device you own. There is also an online OCR equivalent that is powered by the same API.
(a9t9) supports 21 languages for parsing your images and PDF to text. The app is also free to use, and the ad support can be removed with an in-app purchase. Like most free OCR programs, it is idea for printed documents and not handwritten text.
Download: a9t9 Free OCR (Free, in-app purchase)
Capture2Text
Capture2Text is a free OCR software for Windows that gives you keyboard shortcuts to quickly OCR anything on the screen. It’s also an executable that doesn’t require installation.
Use the default keyboard shortcut WinKey + Q to activate the OCR process. You can then use the mouse to select the portion you want to capture. Hit Enter to trigger the optical character recognition. The captured and converted text will appear in a popup and, by default, will also be available in the clipboard.
Capture2Text uses Google’s OCR engine and supports 100+ languages. It uses Google Translate to convert the captured text to other languages. Check the menu in the Windows toolbar to access Settings, toggle saving to clipboard on and off, or switch the default OCR language.
Download: Capture2Text (Free)
Easy Screen OCR
Easy Screen OCR isn’t free. But I mention it here because it is fast and convenient. You can also use it free up to 20 times without any subscription. The software works from the system tray or the taskbar. You can capture text or upload a PDF file, though PDFs are limited to less than 15 pages or 50 MB.
To convert text on your screen, right-click on the Easy Screen OCR icon and select Capture from the menu. Take a screenshot of any image, website, video, document, or anything else on the screen by dragging the mouse cursor. Easy Screen OCR then displays a dialog with three tabs. The screenshot tab gives you a preview of the captured text. Click the OCR button to read the text from the image. The optically converted text can now be copied from the Text tab of the dialog.
You can set the recognition languages for the OCR in the software’s Preferences. More than 100 languages are supported, as the software uses Google’s OCR engine.
Download: Easy Screen OCR (free trial, $9 per month)
Conclusion
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It represents an automatic technique for extracting text from images or PDF files. If you have a document in English and would like to have the same document in Chinese, all you need is a so-called OCR software. In other words, an OCR application lets you translate any textual information from a scanned image of a written document into a useful file format. The process of recognition converts images into text that can be then edited and manipulated just the same as ordinary digital text files.