INFORMATION

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is used in the conversion of handwritten or printed and scanned images onto your PC and transform it into a formatted text file that is readable. The document is thoroughly analysed by OCR software, which singles out any images or writing in the document. There are many great apps as well that can be handy for mobile users

It also tracks and records the characteristic features of particular characters and letters. The software is occasionally available with a spell-checker, which picks out words that it fails to understand. Of course, 100% accuracy is something which cannot be achieved. However, the software is worth using since it saves you a lot of time from having to build the entire process.

Below is a list of some best free OCR software which can convert text from newspapers, books and scanned files or from images taken from your mobile phones into editable words and text files.

SimpleOCR


The difficulty I was having with handwriting recognition using MS tools, could have found a solution in SimpleOCR. But the software offers handwriting recognition only as a 14 day free trial. Machine print recognition though does not have any restrictions.

The software can be set up to read directly from a scanner or by adding a page (jpg, tiff, bmp formats).
SimpleOCR offers some control over the conversion through text selection, image selection and text ignore features.
Conversion to text takes the process into a validation stage; a user can correct discrepancies in the converted text using an in-built spell-checker.
The converted file can be saved to a doc or txt format.
SimpleOCR was fine with normal text, but its handling of multi-column layouts was a comedown. In my opinion, the conversion accuracy of the Microsoft tools was considerably better than SimpleOCR.

Google Docs


Google docs is one of the best OCR app around. It allows you convert larger images and PDF files into texts within few seconds. Google docs does not place limit to the number of files you can convert every day and it also retains the original formatting of the document. Google docs automatically perform conversion of images before saving it to your computer.

OnlineOCR.net 


Online OCR, as the name suggests, is a cloud based OCR service that can handle all common images formats including scanned PDFs. If you have multiple images that you would like to convert to text in one go, you can put them all in a single zip file and upload it to Online OCR.

Of all the OCR services that I have tried so far, Online OCR has impressed me the most. The character recognition accuracy is quite good and the converted documents look like a replica of the original images. In my limited test with three different types of images, Online OCR was able to preserve the structure and formatting after the conversion in all the three case.

Like FineReader, Online OCR offers credits for converting around 5-6   images to text for free and after the limit is over, you�ll have to pay around $4 per 50 pages.

i2OCR.Com


i2OCR- Convert images to texti2OCR.com is a free service with no sign up, no limitation of uploaded file size or number of input files per hour. The interesting feature is that you can choose between 33 different languages before converting the uploaded file into text format. It also has More Productivity Tools tab that includes various options to design your pages to give Phonetic keyboard layout, graphical symbols, Arabic Transliteration etc..

FreeOCR


FreeOCR is a good scanning and OCR program that lets you extract text from popular image file formats such as jpg and tiff files. It also extracts text from scanned PDF documents, and allows images from scanned PDF documents to be selected and placed on the clipboard.

You can save the scanned results as a plain text document or even export directly to Microsoft Word file format. In a complex page, multiple columns will need to be processed individually, and images are transferred via standard copy and paste.

FreeOCR requires the .Net Framework to run and the installer will automatically scan, detect and download the framework for you. The framework is usually already included in the later versions of Windows such as Vista and 7.

OCR to Word


OCR to Word is a text recognition software that can save you countless hours, re-typing all the work you have already written out. It can take any image, document or scanned item and convert it into a editable, readable and accurate Word document. You can download OCR to Word for free from their website here. It also allows for zooming and specification on what part of an image you need. It is optimised to work with any scanner and boasts a 98% accuracy rating.

TopOCR


TopOCR is designed to be simple and easy to use for document scanning with cameras, document cameras, web cameras, smartphones, autofocus and yes, even scanners. Just plug the device into the USB port of your PC, and can open image files in the image window and see automatically the OCR result to the text window. TopOCR combines a complete image editor and word processor functions with advanced image processing technology and high-speed optical character recognition. To document cameras and webcams autofocus, single-click �Preview� real time webcam image and dialogue �Capture� makes it easier to properly position for scanning documents.