

Software programmed to only recognize English characters will not accurately interpret special characters such as β or accented letters such as é. OCR software scan an individual character to determine what letter it is. Such programs should be your choice if you will scan documents in another language. Some OCR programs recognize more than one language. Until you test the program, always take the accuracy claims of the manufacturer with a grain of salt. Good OCR programs will always achieve a 98% when used with a good scanner and with the original documents in mint condition. Factors such as the quality of the original scanned documents, and quality of the scanner itself greatly influence the final result. Nonetheless, it is unrealistic to expect 100% accuracy from any OCR software.

We tested and reviwed each of the software putting the following factors into consideration AccuracyĪccuracy is what differentiates a good OCR program from the bad ones. We did not just randomly pick the best free OCR software. How we arrived at this list of best free OCR Software Also, these files can be accessed remotely. Saving documents in digital form not only saves office space, but also allows quick access of documents. Each step of the process is important in determining the accuracy of the final text. These formats can then be edited and manipulated using programs such as Microsoft Word. These software convert images of text into DOC file or TXT file. So, OCR software helps the computer convert image of text into text itself. In other words, an image of the text is no different from an image of the Eiffel Tower. An image is nothing but a pattern of pixels. First you have to present the computer with an image of the text, a scanned file or an image from a digital camera. The brain recognizes the character patterns (which are letters, numbers, and punctuation marks), and converts the characters to words, and words to sentences.Ĭomputers too can recognize characters and convert them to text. When you are presented with a page of written text, like this one, it is only valuable to you if you can recognize the language and read it. Top 5 Quick Picks: Best Free OCR Software How we arrived at this list of best free OCR Software.Top 5 Quick Picks: Best Free OCR Software.It allows you to capture the text from documents, magazines, signs, and other objects and translate it to another language in real-time. The Google Translate app includes OCR technology that works with your device's camera. The algorithm checks the scanned information against database of existing addresses to confirm the mailing address.


For example, postal services such as USPS use OCR software to automatically process letters and packages based on the address. While OCR technology was originally designed to recognize printed text, it can be used to recognize and verify handwritten text as well. Some OCR programs allow you to scan a document and convert it to a word processing document in a single step. For example, if you scan a multipage document into a digital image, such as a TIFF file, you can load the document into an OCR program, which will recognize the text and convert the document to an editable text file. OCR technology can be used to convert a hard copy of a document into an electronic version (or soft copy). Advanced OCR software can export the size and formatting of the text as well as the layout of the text found on a page. Some OCR software will simply export the text, while other programs can convert the characters to editable text directly in the image. OCR software processes a digital image by locating and recognizing characters, such as letters, numbers, and symbols. It is commonly used to recognize text in scanned documents, but it serves many other purposes as well. Stands for "Optical Character Recognition." OCR is a technology that recognizes text within a digital image.
