Image to Text (OCR): Extract Text From a Photo or Scan

Sometimes the only copy of a document is an image: a screenshot of a message, a photo of a receipt, a scan of a letter. Retyping it is slow and introduces mistakes. The Image to Text (OCR) tool reads the text in the image and returns it as editable copy.

#What OCR does

Optical character recognition looks at the shapes of letters in an image and maps them to characters. Modern OCR is very good on clean, straight text. It struggles with handwriting, unusual fonts, glare, skew, low resolution and complex layouts such as tables.

#How to get better results

The quality of the input matters more than any setting:

• Use a sharp image. Blur and low resolution lose the edges OCR depends on.
• Keep the page straight. Rotate or deskew a crooked photo before uploading.
• Crop to the text. Remove backgrounds, hands and unrelated content.
• Improve contrast. Dark text on a light background reads best.
• Avoid glare. Reflections hide characters.
• Use a screenshot where possible. A screenshot is pixel-perfect compared with a photo of a screen.

#How to use the tool

1. Open the Image to Text (OCR) tool.
2. Upload a JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP or GIF image.
3. Run the extraction.
4. Copy the resulting text into your editor.

#Always proofread

OCR does not understand what it reads. It can turn rn into m, confuse 0 and O, and guess at accented characters. Read the extracted text against the original before you use it in a document, especially for names, numbers, dates and amounts.

#Where OCR is useful

• Copying text from a screenshot instead of retyping it.
• Digitising a printed page or a typewritten note.
• Pulling an address or reference number out of a photo.
• Making a scanned receipt or invoice searchable.
• Extracting text from an image you cannot select normally.

#Frequently asked questions

What formats are supported? JPG, JPEG, PNG, WebP, BMP and GIF.

Does it work with handwriting? Poorly. Handwriting varies too much; print is far more reliable.

Is the extracted text editable? Yes. Copy it into any editor and correct any errors.

Why are some characters wrong? Low resolution, blur, glare or an unusual font make recognition harder.

Is my image stored? It is processed to produce the text and is not saved permanently.