Introduction
Imagine you have a scanned image of handwriting text, Invoices, Payroll data, Contact details, Client data or a book, etc. You would like to extract the data like tables and text from the image and use a digital and editable copy of a such document. How can you do this?
The first way is to manually copy text and tables, but this way is hard and time-consuming especially if you have a large number of documents or you have some table or even handwritten text. Another better way is to use optical character recognition (OCR) software and tools to extract the text from the image. OCR software like AlgoDocs analyzes an image of text and converts it into machine-readable text. Based on my personal investigation, AlgoDocs is quite accurate and can be used to extract both printed and handwritten text and tables from scanned images with a high degree of accuracy.
In this article, we will explore how to use OCR software in general and AlgoDocs, in particular, to extract text from images, which based on my long investigation one of the best OCRs available on the market. That also provides a forever free subscription plan with 50 pages per month.
What Is OCR and Text to Image?
OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, which is a process of extracting content like tables and text from an image. This can be done through software or a hardware scanner. Text to Image is the conversion of text into an image, usually for the purpose of storage, transmission, and having an editable copy that can be modified.
What Can OCR Extract From an Image?
OCR software can extract a surprising amount of text from an image. It can recognize and decipher the handwritten text, text in screenshots, text on photos, and tabular data. This makes it an incredibly valuable tool for digitizing and archiving old documents, as well as for making the text in images searchable.
But it’s not just old or obscure documents that can benefit from OCR. A well-run business can use OCR to digitize and archive all of its paper documents, making them easier to access and search. This can include invoices, purchase orders, shipping manifests, and more. And if you’re taking pictures of your notes for class, you can use OCR to make them searchable and editable.
What is AlgoDocs and what are its main features?
AlgoDocs is a web-based tool that can extract handwritten and printed tables and text. In addition, thanks to the used AI-based OCR engine, we can even extract data from low-quality images. In summary, its main features are:
Extracting all types of tables, even the multipage and complicated ones. And as mentioned before the ones allocated in low-quality images ( see Figures 1 and 2). An easy to follow Video Tutorial that demonstrates how to extract tables with AlgoDocs is also available.
AlgoDocs has developed an ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) algorithm that can efficiently detect handwritten tables and text and save it as machine-printed ( see Figures 3 and 4).
Figure 1. Low quality scanned image uploaded to AlgoDocs.
Figure 2. The extracted machine-printed table using AlgoDocs.
Figure 3. Handwritten text uploaded to AlgoDocs.
Figure 4. The machine-printed text generated by AlgoDocs.
Benefits of Using OCR tools like AlgoDocs for Text Extraction
Aside from the fact that using OCR for text extraction is speedy and accurate, there are several other benefits that make this method of data entry preferable to others.
For one thing, OCR is a great option if you have a lot of text in a small space. This can be the case with things like business cards, receipts, and invoices. Rather than trying to manually type out all of this information, you can simply scan it using an OCR tool, which will quickly and easily extract the text for you.
Another benefit of using OCR is that it’s much more efficient than other methods of data entry, such as manual typing or copy-and-paste. With OCR, you can batch process a large number of files at once, which saves a ton of time in the long run.
So if you’re looking for a fast, accurate, and efficient way to extract text from images, OCR is the way to go.
Conclusion
OCR tools are a great way to extract text from images. By using these tools, you can quickly and easily extract the text from any image, which can then be used for a variety of purposes.
There are a number of different OCR tools available, and each one has its own unique features. It is important to choose the right tool for the task at hand and to familiarize yourself with the tool’s capabilities before using it.
Once you have extracted text/tables/handwritten from an image, you can use it for a variety of purposes, including creating documents, transcribing handwritten notes, and more.Now you can use the free forever subscription plan with 50 pages per month. You may check AlgoDocs pricing if you need to process more pages.
