using IronOcr; using IronSoftware.Drawing; // We can delve deep into OCR results as an object model of // Pages, Barcodes, Paragraphs, Lines, Words and Characters // This allows us to explore, export and draw OCR content using other APIs/ var ocrTesseract = new IronTesseract(); ocrTesseract.Configuration.ReadBarCodes = true; using var ocrInput = new OcrInput(); var pages = new int[] { 1, 2 }; ocrInput.LoadImageFrames("example.tiff", pages); OcrResult ocrResult = ocrTesseract.Read(ocrInput); foreach (var page in ocrResult.Pages) { // Page object int PageNumber = page.PageNumber; string PageText = page.Text; int PageWordCount = page.WordCount; // null if we dont set Ocr.Configuration.ReadBarCodes = true; OcrResult.Barcode[] Barcodes = page.Barcodes; AnyBitmap PageImage = page.ToBitmap(ocrInput); int PageWidth = page.Width; int PageHeight = page.Height; double PageRotation = page.Rotation; // angular correction in degrees from OcrInput.Deskew() foreach (var paragraph in page.Paragraphs) { // Pages -> Paragraphs int ParagraphNumber = paragraph.ParagraphNumber; string ParagraphText = paragraph.Text; AnyBitmap ParagraphImage = paragraph.ToBitmap(ocrInput); int ParagraphX_location = paragraph.X; int ParagraphY_location = paragraph.Y; int ParagraphWidth = paragraph.Width; int ParagraphHeight = paragraph.Height; double ParagraphOcrAccuracy = paragraph.Confidence; OcrResult.TextFlow paragrapthText_direction = paragraph.TextDirection; foreach (var line in paragraph.Lines) { // Pages -> Paragraphs -> Lines int LineNumber = line.LineNumber; string LineText = line.Text; AnyBitmap LineImage = line.ToBitmap(ocrInput); int LineX_location = line.X; int LineY_location = line.Y; int LineWidth = line.Width; int LineHeight = line.Height; double LineOcrAccuracy = line.Confidence; double LineSkew = line.BaselineAngle; double LineOffset = line.BaselineOffset; foreach (var word in line.Words) { // Pages -> Paragraphs -> Lines -> Words int WordNumber = word.WordNumber; string WordText = word.Text; AnyBitmap WordImage = word.ToBitmap(ocrInput); int WordX_location = word.X; int WordY_location = word.Y; int WordWidth = word.Width; int WordHeight = word.Height; double WordOcrAccuracy = word.Confidence; foreach (var character in word.Characters) { // Pages -> Paragraphs -> Lines -> Words -> Characters int CharacterNumber = character.CharacterNumber; string CharacterText = character.Text; AnyBitmap CharacterImage = character.ToBitmap(ocrInput); int CharacterX_location = character.X; int CharacterY_location = character.Y; int CharacterWidth = character.Width; int CharacterHeight = character.Height; double CharacterOcrAccuracy = character.Confidence; // Output alternative symbols choices and their probability. // Very useful for spellchecking OcrResult.Choice[] Choices = character.Choices; } } } } }

Published June 17, 2022

Online OCR converter — Free Online Tools

OCR stands for optical character recognition. It is a process by which a computer converts an image containing text into machine-readable text. The process is done by converting scanned images into text that can be edited on a word processor. In the past, OCR was only used to convert paper documents and images into digital format, but now it has become widely used in many interactive environments. OCR software is widely used by companies such as Google to digitize books and newspapers, making them searchable and indexing them for display in libraries around the world. The use of OCR has expanded in the last decade with the combination of data and analytics. Organizations are increasingly using it to consolidate data from different sources, timestamp it, and create metadata for it. This has helped organizations to make decisions based on accurate metrics. OCR is increasingly being used across industries. It allows for tasks such as automated scanning, data extraction, and transcription services to be done at a much faster pace. To use OCR, a word must be outlined using character recognition software that converts the image into text. The famous Google Translate software is based on OCR technology.

In this article, we will review three free online OCR tools, and then the IronOCR .NET library.

Free Online OCR Tools

This section is about free online OCR tools. Online OCR tools exist to help us with the process of converting paper-based documents into digital texts. There are many OCR tools available on the market. These tools provide an accurate conversion of scanned images into editable text. Some of these services allow you to upload the scanned files for a fee before returning the desired text, while others are free online OCR tools that can be used without any cost at all. Let's take a look at three free online OCR tools.

OnlineOCR

OnlineOCR is an online scanning service provider, enabling quick and accurate conversions of paper documents into digital formats. It provides a fast way to turn paper documents into digital files. OnlineOCR provides document conversion services to organizations worldwide, using advanced technology to digitize any paper document in seconds. All scans are done by human employees who are trained at the highest levels to provide high-quality conversion. Let's see how we can do OCR using this online tool:

Open the OnlineOCR website.
Click on the "Select File" button and select a file to upload. You can select any image file or printed document.
In Step 2, you can select the OCR language and output type. You can select .docx, .xsls, and plain text format for the output result.
After that, click on the Convert button. It will start the OCR of the given file. You can select the image file or any scanned document.
The output result will show in a textbox. You can also download the output file in Microsoft Word document format.

Input Image:

Output:

OCR.Space

OCR.Space is a free web app for anyone to upload and convert paper documents into editable text. It is useful for students, translators, researchers, and journalists. This online OCR tool has been designed with the purpose to offer an easy solution for small and medium businesses to digitize paper files to save space on their servers. Let's take a look at how we can do OCR using this website.

Open the OCR.Space website in your browser.
Click on the "Choose File" button and select the file. It can be a PDF file or any image file you want to convert into text. You can also use the URL of any image or PDF document to perform online OCR.
You must select a language for the OCR task. You can select it from the dropdown.
OCR.Space offers the auto-rotate image option if the image file is not in the correct position.
If there is any invoice or table in uploaded PDF documents, then you will have to select the "Table Recognition" option.
Select an option from the "Create Searchable PDF". After that, select any OCR engine to perform OCR online.
After that, click on the "Start OCR" button. This will begin the process of text recognition from uploaded files and will show the output text in the Output Textbox.

OCR2Edit

OCR2Edit is an online OCR tool that allows you to convert scanned PDFs, images, and screenshots into editable text files. It does not require installation, unlike traditional OCR tools. You can just upload the document that you want to convert and then specify the language in which it will be converted. OCR2Edit is a great online tool that helps you turn scanned documents into editable documents with ease. You can upload any document and convert it to the language of your choice without installing any software on your device or downloading any software to your computer. OCR2Edit offers six types of OCR tools.

You can convert image files to text, convert to Word, convert PDF to text, and many other tasks. In this article, we will explore the "Image to Text" tool. Let's take a look at how to do it:

Go to the Image to Text tool on the OCR2Edit website.
Click on the Choose File button and upload files for OCR.

After that, click on the "Start" button. It will extract text and give you output on the next page in a text document. The output document will download automatically.

IronOCR: C# OCR Library

The IronOCR library is a high-performance, easy-to-use, and easy-installation OCR library that provides developers with a robust set of tools for performing optical character recognition (OCR) tasks. The library is essentially a set of OCR algorithms created in C# with an API for developers to easily integrate into their projects. It provides developers with the ability to perform accurate OCR in a variety of environments, such as paper documents or scanned images. Developers can create optical character recognition software using this library. Its API makes it compatible with the majority of languages and many popular frameworks. It also has an extensive testing suite that provides detailed test coverage. The library supports the following file formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, and PDF.

The IronOCR library supports multilingual character sets as well as single languages (English). The library includes support for the recognition of bitonal or greyscale documents, grayscale images, color images with Bayer pattern or without Bayer pattern, color images with CMYK or without CMYK, and grayscale images with or without grayscale information. The IronOCR library is ideal for document recognition, text processing, and image processing. Let's take a look at the code example for using the IronOCR library in a C# project:

using IronOcr;
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
using (var Input = new OcrInput()){
    Input.AddImage("images/sample.jpeg")
    //... you can add any number of images
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

using IronOcr;
var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
using (var Input = new OcrInput()){
    Input.AddImage("images/sample.jpeg")
    //... you can add any number of images
    var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);
    Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
}

Imports IronOcr
Private Ocr = New IronTesseract()
Using Input = New OcrInput()
	Input.AddImage("images/sample.jpeg") var Result = Ocr.Read(Input)
	Console.WriteLine(Result.Text)
End Using

VB C#

Summary

IronOCR is the leader when it comes to performing these particular tasks. It does a great job with all supported languages. You don't need to have internet or external software to use it. With just a few lines of code, your own OCR software is ready to use.

IronOCR is free for development but you have to pay to use it in production. However, you can try the IronOCR library using the free trial for production. You can also currently purchase all five of the Iron Software products for the price of just two. For more details, check out this link.