Easy Screen OCR

How Does OCR Software Work?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It consists of a technology that allows you to convert image to text or, in other words, turn scanned images or photos of paper-based documents into digital documents that can be edited and searched through.

It works by analyzing light and dark patterns from letters or numbers present in a physical object to render them into text on a word processor or PDF.

Earlier OCR systems worked with only one particular font (specially designed for these purposes). In recent times, these applications are able to recognize characters in a wide array of fonts and, in some cases, even handwriting (through a technology called intelligent character recognition or ICR).

OCR software providers will oftentimes require that you import scans with the best possible quality to avoid errors in the recognition process. Blurred or low-resolution images are prone to be poorly assessed by the recognition software and, consequently, to generate wrong entries.

The advantage of using OCR is two-fold. For one, you can effectively bypass tedious keyboarding, saving you time and effort. On the other hand, you can save physical space by having your physical documents digitalized and easily browsable. In an office environment, this can considerably improve workflow by enabling users to create a digital library, meanwhile reducing the chances of lost or misfiled documents.

The Best 3 OCR Applications

At one point in time, only a few selected OCR programs were available to the public. Nowadays, you’ll be able to find tons of options on several operating systems. However, we’ll be turning our attention to 3 specific applications through which you can extract text from pictures.

1. Google OCR

What is Google OCR?

Google Cloud Vision OCR is an online OCR module that is contained within the Google Cloud Vision API. The software is devised to help users extract text from images and paper-based documents. You’ll be likewise able to obtain text from a myriad of objects containing text, such as billboards, posters, or flyers.

How to Use Google OCR

The free OCR service allows you to import text from images to a Google Docs file. The steps are quite simple:

1. Log into your Google Drive account via the app or web browser.
2. Import an image (.jpg, .png, or .gif) with legible text on it.
3. Right-click (or long-tap) on the image file, hover over or tap on “Open with” and select “Google Docs”. That will launch the Google Docs app, which will then proceed to perform the optical recognition.
4. The document will open with the image at the top and the results of the recognition procedure at the bottom for browsing or editing.

To use the more advanced OCR features, you’ll need to have a bit of knowledge of Node.js, Python, or Java coding languages. You can find a very extensive tutorial here.

How Good is Google OCR?

The free OCR features are very easy to use. You can convert images captured from your mobile phone camera or downloaded from the web easily into an editable PDF format.

Nonetheless, this OCR seems to be a bit lacking in the presence of bold or italic letters, and it doesn’t always match the font size. Furthermore, the service will struggle whenever there are numbered lists, bullet points, tables, columns, headers, or footers, to the point in which they don’t appear at all in the processed text.

2. Adobe OCR

What is Adobe OCR?

Adobe OCR is a functionality built into the Adobe Acrobat series that lets you render any PDF or image searchable and/or editable, By doing this, you can edit, search and index the text contained within a file originally intended to be barely visualized.

How Do I OCR a PDF in Adobe?

Since it’s a built-in feature, you can access it through the Reader or Scan applications. However, in order to enjoy it, you need an Adobe Acrobat subscription.

In Adobe Acrobat DC (the latest cloud-based version of Adobe Acrobat), you ought to perform the following steps:

• Open the PDF in Acrobat DC.
• In the right-hand panel, go over to “Tools” and select “Enhance Scans”.
• Click on “Recognize Text”, “In This File”, and then on the “Recognize Text” button. Adobe will trigger its OCR function.
• Go to “Tools” and click on “Export PDF”.
• Choose the format and click on “Export”.

On Adobe X Pro and XI Standard, the procedure goes as follows:

• Open the PDF.
• Go to “View”, then “Tools”, then “Recognize Text in This File”.
• You may select the processed text and paste it into a word processor, or export it as a Word file.

How Good is Adobe OCR?

Adobe OCR is great and highly intuitive since you won’t need to open many applications at once. It’s all built into one unit for seamless OCR.

It also endows users with an assistant for checking and fixing suspected Adobe OCR errors.

There are, however, some minor setbacks (or major, depending on your needs). You’ll have to pay a relatively high fee to benefit from it. Additionally, it’s not designed for multiple-file OCR.

Does Adobe OCR a PDF for Free?

In order to make a PDF or image searchable, you’ll need a $12.99 monthly Acrobat Standard DC subscription. The Acrobat Pro DC subscription is $2 more expensive and enables you to make editable images and PDFs.

3. Easy Screen OCR

What is Easy Screen OCR?

Easy Screen is a pretty straightforward freeware application to help users get text from screenshots in more than 100 languages. It uses the Google OCR engine and you can choose between Google OCR Mode or Easy Screen’s own OCR Mode (“Mode 2”, available for 10 languages).

How to Extract Text from Pictures Via Easy Screen OCR

The procedure is quite simple:

• Download and install Easy Screen OCR from their official website.
• Follow the instructions of the installation wizard.
• After installing, the tool icon will be visible on your taskbar. Right-click on it and choose “Capture”.
• Select the screen area you want to process.
• A preview will appear on the lower right corner of the screen, with a Picture tab and a Text tab.
• On the picture tab, click “OCR”.
• The text will then appear on the Text tab. You can copy this text and paste it into the application or program of choice.

Main benefits of Easy Screen OCR

Despite the obvious limitations that are proper to a free OCR software (such as a lack of advanced formatting and inability to import images or PDFs), this program provides one of the easiest ways to extract text from pictures shown on the screen. You won’t have to dig too much into an application to find the OCR function, as it’s right there on your taskbar for immediate access. In that sense, it’s one of the best in terms of usability.

Does OCR Use Deep Learning?

OCR has been traditionally fraught with many issues related to accuracy in how it handles text recognition, due to its naturally “mechanical” approach.

Thanks to AI, though, many modern OCR engines have been implementing more “intelligent” text detection and recognition capabilities thanks to “deep learning”.

Deep learning has been very crucial in data science, as it aims to address problems in machine learning related to how manmade systems acquire knowledge through the execution of algorithms that gather human input.

Within this paradigm, OCRs can, through constant object detection and instance segmentation (regions defined at a pixel level), as well as the implementation of a myriad of AI algorithms, perform text recognition in a manner that corresponds better to what a user would expect.

Read this article and know deeper how OCR work: How optical character recognition works

Conclusion:

Throughout this article, we’ve been able to parse through a selection of the best OCR applications, their benefits, setbacks, and other relevant yet relatively basic information on how to use them. Each of these tools has its own target audience and, depending on your current demands, you’ll be able to take advantage of the features they offer.

Also, thanks to the increasing progress in OCR technology, you’ll be capable of improving your workflow and productivity, whether you work heavily with photos taken from real-life experiences or you simply want read-only files to be editable or searchable.

Still interested in more useful OCR tools for improving your productivity? Come to read the following articles and you are able to find more wanted OCR programs and their detailed tutorials.

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How to Choose the Best PDF OCR Services Online