What is Optical Character Recognition

OCR is a technology designed to convert scanned, printed or handwritten imagery into machine decipherable text format. The image conversion software analyses the document and compares it with fonts from a database, determining features which are typical to characters.

The image converter program also searches for common characteristics like open areas, diagonal lines, line intersections, closed shapes etc. The key element in an OCR solution is the procedure of data capture and extraction.

An OCR application takes cloud computing one step ahead. Its popularity increases every year, with the initiation of fast microprocessors making way for greatly improved optical character recognition techniques.

It encompasses all the basic features of any Internet-based storage software along with the capabilities of scanning, uploading and editing handwritten or typed paperwork. Once OCR has finished converting the image to text, the user is presented with a wide variety of formats to manipulate the data.

What is OCR Software?

OCR is an acronym for Optical Character Recognition. It is a software which enables you to transform an image of words (such as a scanned copy of a typed or handwritten document), into a digitally recognized text resource. Basically, it converts a scanned image to text format, which you can share and publish from your preferred text editor. An OCR application follows two simple set of steps:

  1. Scanning
  2. Converting the text content into a machine readable format

With some software’s performing better with your documents than others the task of finding and highlighting the best OCR application is important.

On the bright side, there ARE image to text software’s which maintain their standards and constantly improve as well as update the performance of their product. E.g. OmniPage Pro, Readiris Pro and ABBYY FineReader

OCR Features

Optical Character Recognition not only saves time while scanning but also, creates smarter documents. It eliminates the stack of documents you have piled on your desk and converts them into electronic search engines of informative knowledge. . A basic feature of any optical character recognition software is the ability for to open and edit some of the most famous image formats (JPG, BMB, TIFF etc.) and PDF files.

Other features include-

Conclusion

The dawn of image to text OCR technology has solved if not all, most problems related to data entry and information accessibility. It cleverly converts a picture of words into an editable version of itself. An OCR application is easy-to-use and offers a variety of features and options for home users and corporate users.