How to extract Text from Images..!

Here, we are going to see methods to extract text from images. Not only methods but also some information about how is it done.

Why generally we need to learn this trick?

We need this trick in our daily life. We see many images on facebook or instagram or anywhere else. Many a times it happens that the image contains the text of our imporatnce. Suppose that you asked you asked someone to send you details of any assignment. And he/she sends you images in order to prevent any changes in the assignment or with a view that you cannot copy it.

Other problem we face is, when we download any E-book from Internet. We generally get a scanned copy of it, which makes hard for us to complete our task. Many a time such things happens where we want the text to be extracted from an image. So, here we are going to see how is it done.!

How is text extracted from an image?

All operating systems come with Copy and Paste ability and the power it holds, is truly amazing. If you have huge text of 5000 or 10000 words, all you have to do is highlight all and press Ctrl+C to copy and now you can paste that text anywhere you like, otherwise you would have to type the whole text again! And that’s just one of its uses out of many.

However, this little trick doesn’t work on Images, you can’t just highlight text on an Image and copy it. There are situations where you need to copy text from a picture, like you have a screenshot of some text that you need to extract. For this purpose, there are specific Optical Character Recognition (OCR) softwares that can extract text from these images. 

Optical character recognition (also optical character reader, OCR) is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo (for example the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo) or from subtitle text superimposed on an image (for example from a television broadcast).

You can use these OCR softwares to extract text from images. In the past these softwares came with a price and mostly still do, but you can also get a free OCR software now. There is a chance you already have one right now, but you don’t know about it.

Early versions needed to be trained with images of each character, and worked on one font at a time. Advanced systems capable of producing a high degree of recognition accuracy for most fonts are now common, and with support for a variety of digital image file format inputs.

The accuracy of these softwares is not 100% correct, however, it is quite good, better than typing the whole text again. The accuracy basically depends on how the text is written in the picture, such as format, size, and other colors and designs, etc.

In this tutorial, we are going to discuss two tools which you can use to extract text from images.

Method #1: Copy Text from Picture Using Microsoft OneNote

As I mentioned above, many of you might have an OCR software but you might be unaware about it. Most of you guys already have Microsoft OneNote, but you didn’t know that it came with OCR capabilities since 2007. You can just upload the image in OneNote and extract text from it. If you don’t have Microsoft OneNote, then you can download it free from Here (you must also have a Microsoft account or create a new one to use it).

Step 1 : Open OneNote.

Step 2 : Click on Instert > Pictures. Insert the pictures you want to extract text from. (You can also copy the picture by moving to its location and then paste it in OneNote.)

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Step 3 : Now, right click on the image inserted, and click on "Copy text from Picture".

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Step 4 : Now that the text is copied from picture, we just need to paste it somewhere. You can paste it beside the picture in OneNote only or-else you can open a new Word or Notepad file and paste the text there. (I have pasted the text in notepad.)

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Step 5 : Just enjoy...!

Method #2: Copy Text from Picture Using an OCR Website

There may be sometimes reasons that you don't want to use OneNote. The one of it is that, you require a login to microsoft account to use OneNote. So, here is an alternative where no login is required. But it need your device connected to internet as it is an online service.

You can use a dedicated OCR website that will let you upload the image and will extract the text for you. For this tutorial, we have chosen Online OCR, but there are also many other websites which you can try if you are not comfortable with this one.

In the Privacy Policy they did mention that they will never see the content of the file which the user uploads, however, we will still not recommend using such services for extremely sensitive files.

Step 1 : Visit :- http://www.free-ocr.com/

Step 2 : Upload an image by clicking on 'Browse' button. If the image is from any hosted website, copy the link of image and paste it in the "Enter a URL" inputbox. Also, select a language in which you want the output. (NOTE : It does not work as a translator.)

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Step 3 : After uploading an image and selecting a language, click on 'Start' button.

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Step 4 : Wait for the processing to complete. It may take 5-10 seconds. After completion, you will be provided with results, below which all the text will be written.

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Step 5 : Copy the text from there and paste it in Notepad or Word for further use.

Step 6 : Enjoy..

If you have more than just one image, then you will have to Sign Up to take advantage of additional features which involves extracting text from more than one image and some other useful features.

To get a video tutorial on this trick, click here..

If there are any questions or you would like to add another method to extract text from image, let us know in the comments below.