Changelog: Updates, milestones, roadmap

IronOCR Roadmap

We developed IronOCR to fill a market need, and it’s excelled as one of our leading products. Today we are continually shipping new feature requests, driven by community demand.

We actively work with Google’s latest Tesseract technology to drive stability and high accuracy. This ensures our customers are benefiting from the cutting edge OCR reading engine.

Our monthly releases see IronOCR continually prove its worth, and drive our mission to help end users move the .NET language forward.

We know IronOCR is one of the top choices developers make¹. To cement IronOCR as the leading product of its kind we are applying the latest technology to improve image filters, computer vision and machine learning.

Our next epic will be to launch IronOCR for multiple programming languages.

^{¹Based on a customer survey conducted in June 2022.}

October 2024

IronOCR v2024.10.3

Oct 3, 2024

Version /2024.10.3

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.10.3

Release Notes:

Improves ReadPassport for rotated input.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.9.11

September 2024

IronOCR v2024.9.6

Sep 9, 2024

Version 2024.9.6

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.9.6

Release Notes:

Adds a new reading method ReadDocumentAdvanced speficalized for Table data read.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.9.10

August 2024

IronOCR v2024.8.21

Jul 31, 2024

Version 2024.8.21

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.8.21

Release Notes:

Fixes temp files do not get cleaned after finish reading
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.8.1

July 2024

IronOCR v2024.7.13

Jul 10, 2024

Version 2024.7.13

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.7.13

Release Notes:

Fixes DetecPageOrientation only returned the result of the first page content.
Fixes ConvertToSearchablePdf overload issue.
Reduces searchable PDF output file size from Tiff input file.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.7.2

June 2024

IronOCR v2024.6.3

Jun 4, 2024

Version 2024.6.3

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.6.3

Release Notes:

Improved control over scanned characters: Gain more control over the characters captured during advanced scans.
Enhanced document scanning: Advanced scan mode now supports a wider range of languages including Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Latin, allowing you to scan documents in more languages.
Fixes issue where searchable PDFs returned overlapped text: This update resolves an issue where text in searchable PDFs appeared overlapped after scanning.
Fixes issue when deploying to Azure Function: This update resolves an issue where deploying IronOCR to Azure Functions caused an error.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.6.1

May 2024

IronOCR v2024.5.25

Apr 29, 2024

Version 2024.5.25

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.5.25

Release Notes:

Introduces new Read methods, required separate installation of the IronOcr.Extension.AdvancedScan package.
New advanced method: ReadPhoto() [See IronOcr.Extension.AdvancedScan NuGet package].
New advanced method: ReadScreenshot() [See IronOcr.Extension.AdvancedScan NuGet package].
New advanced method: ReadPassport() [See IronOcr.Extension.AdvancedScan NuGet package].
New advanced method: ReadLicensePlate() [See IronOcr.Extension.AdvancedScan NuGet package].
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.5.1

April 2024

IronOCR v2024.4.6

Apr 9, 2024

Version 2024.4.6

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.4.6

Release Notes:

Remove public log that is not related to OCR processs.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.4.1

March 2024

IronOCR v2024.3.4

Mar 8, 2024

Version 2024.3.4

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.3.4

Release Notes:

Implement DetectPageOrientation to detect orientation of the input.
Fixed a bug where license key would not be picked up from web.config file in .NET Framework.
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.3.4

February 2024

IronOCR v2024.2.41

Jan 29, 2024

Version 2024.2.41

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.2.41

Release Notes:

Overhauls all OcrInput methods to use Load instead of Add prefix. Please try .Load(), .LoadImage(), .LoadPdf()
Improved overall speed by up to 90% in large PDF input contexts, using up to 80% less allocations and live objects
Improved memory management for bitmaps in IronCV contexts
Moved SearchablePdf to its own flag. See Configuration.RenderSearchablePdf which is on by default
Removed hOCR outputs from default flags. Use Configuration.RenderhOCR = true to explicitly use
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing Dependency to 2024.2.2

January 2024

IronOCR v2024.1.17

Dec 29, 2023

Version 2024.1.17

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2024.1.17

Release Notes:

Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to v2024.4.1
Fix Rotation got ignored in output searchable PDF
Fix the dimension of the output searchable PDF to be relative to the input images
Fix issue of 16 BPP bmp exported as blank searchable PDF

December 2023

IronOCR v2023.12.34

Nov 27, 2023

Version 2023.12.34

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.12.34

Release Notes:

Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to v2023.12.1

November 2023

IronOCR v2023.11.35

Oct 27, 2023

Version 2023.11.35

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.11.35

Release Notes:

Saving Searchable PDF now correctly outputs original image dimensions instead of A4
Resolved issue with pre-rotated PDF documents saving as square output Searchable PDFs
OcrResult.Barcode's Position data now based on original image instead of relative to Crop Region
Support for UTF-8 Encodings for OcrResult.SaveAsTextFile
StampCropRectangle can now accept a list of rectangles to stamp
StampCropRectangle has a static overload that returns the stamped OcrInput for further processing

October 2023

IronOCR v2023.10.9

Oct 05, 2023

Version 2023.10.9

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.10.9

Release Notes:

Updated IronSoftware.System.Drawing to version 2023.10.1.
Updated IronSoftware.Common to version 2023.10.2.

September 2023

IronOCR v2023.9.4

Sep 19, 2023

Version 2023.9.4

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.9.4

Release Notes:

Fixes bug causing a crash when multiple Iron Software products are installed
Added IronSoftware.Common as a new dependency
Updated IronSoftware.System.Drawing to version 2023.9.2
Updated IronSoftware.Native.PdfModelto version 2023.9.18570

August 2023

IronOCR v2023.8.34

Aug 1, 2023

Version 2023.8.34

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.8.34

Release Notes:

Searchable PDFs now retain bookmarks, annotations, page orientation, etc. (use OcrPdfInput)
Searchable PDFs now require less disk space
Added OcrPdfInput class for streamlined OCR of PDF documents
Added OcrImageInput class for streamlined OCR of images
Deprecated OcrInput class, although it will still be available for the foreseeable future
Fixes stamping of crop rectangles not displaying properly

July 2023

IronOCR v2023.7.28

Jul 3, 2023

Version 2023.7.28

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.7.28

Release Notes:

Added EnableTesseractWarnings set to false by default, to suppress Tesseract warnings in the console
Using IronSoftware.Native.PdfModel to read and write PDF
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to 2023.7.1

June 2023

IronOCR v2023.6.6

May 29, 2023

Version 2023.6.6

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.6.6

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

PostBuildEvent Runtime Folder Copy Fix: Resolved an issue related to copying the runtime folder during PostBuildEvent
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to 2023.6.1

May 2023

IronOCR v2023.5.35

May 1, 2023

Version 2023.5.35

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.5.35

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

Fixes an issue where license keys would not be retrieved from web.config in some .NET Framework ASP.NET projects
Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to 2023.4.4

April 2023

IronOCR v2023.4.13

Apr 6, 2023

Version 2023.4.13

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.4.13

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

Updates IronSoftware.System.Drawing to 2023.3.3
Includes new ReadPdfAndOverlayText method on IronTesseract to add text and preserve original PDF bookmarks/annotations
Resolves an issue causing Searchable PDFs with many images to becomes large files
Fixes an issue where the Binarize filter made Searchable PDFs blank
Fixes issue where the Read method would create temp files and not clean them up
Adds support for the IronSuite license keys
Fixes issues with license keys stored in .config and .json files not being picked up by IronOCR
Adds support for license keys stored in .config and .json files in subfolders of the application

March 2023

IronOCR v2023.3.2

Mar 1, 2023

Version 2023.3.2

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.3.2

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

Adds compatibility for AWS (Amazon Linux)
Adds compatibility for various older Linux distributions
Improves reliability when reading text from PDFs
Improves speed and fidelity when creating searchable PDFs
Improves logic for finding language files
Removes dependency on System.Drawing

January 2023

IronOCR v2023.1.11644

Jan 18, 2023

Version 2023.1.11644

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2023.1.11644

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

Adds Installation.LanguagePackDirectory for specifying path to .ocrdata files
Fixes IronOcr for use with ClickOnce publishing and 'dotnet publish' command
Fixes some instances where language packs would fail to load
Fixes crop rectangle being ignored when reading from TIFF images
Fixes trial users not being able to read text from images
Allows single-threaded OCR reads (see IronTesseract.Multithreaded)

December 2022

IronOCR v2022.12.10830

Dec 5, 2022

Version 2022.12.10830

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2022.12.10830

Release Notes:

Major Changes:

Adds IronSoftware.System.Drawing to replace System.Drawing.Common in IronOCR
Removes internal dependency on System.Drawing.Common (see footnote [1] for more info)
Adds support for .NET 7
Removes support for .NET Framework 4. Minimum supported for .NET Framework is now version 4.6.2

Other Changes:

Improves support for many Linux Distros
Improves OcrFilters.DeNoise : Now reduces speckle noise.
Adds brand new OcrFilters to improve reading from noisy images:
Open : Filter that is useful for removing noise.
Close : Filter that is useful for closing small holes inside foreground objects.
AdaptiveThreshold : Applies a Bradley Adaptive Threshold to the image.

[1] Note about removal of System.Drawing.Common:

Microsoft has discontinued support for System.Drawing.Common on non-Windows for .NET 6, and completely for .NET 7 : https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/core/compatibility/core-libraries/6.0/system-drawing-common-windows-only
In order to handle this, we have developed an open-source library called IronSoftware.System.Drawing which easily translates between all the common types and formats that System.Drawing.Common did which will replace it
Customers who still want to use System.Drawing.Common with IronOCR will still be able to. IronSoftware.System.Drawing will work with this format but since System.Drawing.Common is no longer a dependency, usage will require the customer to add a `using System.Drawing.Common;` call in their code.

October 2022

IronOCR v2022.11.10109

Oct 26, 2022

Version 2022.11.10109

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2022.11.10109

Release Notes:

Fixes MAUI support
Fixes 'missing runtimes folder' error
Fixes 'missing libtesseract' error
Greatly improved compatibility and deployment on many platforms
Adds 'Installation.MachineLearningModelsDirectory' for specifying path to .onnx files
Minor bug fixes
Now supports installation via zip file or installer

September 2022

IronOCR v2022.10.9390

Sep 27, 2022

Version 2022.10.9390

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2022.10.9390

Release Notes:

Adds support for using machine learning technology to detect regions which may contain text
Adds OcrInput methods FindTextRegion and FindMultipleTextRegions - add the IronOcr.ComputerVision NuGet package for your platform
Adds OcrResult method SaveAsSearchablePdfStream for saving a result as a PDF stream
Updates Windows build to require fewer dependencies and use less disk space
Updates image loading to always remove color tables from images before performing OCR, improving accuracy
Fixes GetCropRectangleImage to work properly with all source image formats
Fixes issue with Installation.LoggingMode and LogFilePath not applying properly

August 2022

IronOCR v2022.8.8198

Aug 18, 2022

Version 2022.8.8198

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2022.8.8198

Release Notes:

Added new method for visualizing a crop rectangle on an image. See OcrInput.StampCropRectangleAndSaveAs()
Added new method for applying multiple filters at once. See OcrInput.ApplyMultipleFilters()
Changes Deskew filter to no longer throw an exception on failure
Improves compatibility on Windows systems which may not have Microsoft C++ redistributables installed
Improves compatibility on MacOs systems (both Intel and Apple Silicon) which may be missing certain imaging libraries

July 2022

IronOCR v2022.8.7804

Jul 26, 2022

Version 2022.8.7804

Features & Upgrades

https://www.nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/2022.8.7804

Release Notes:

Updates Tesseract to version 5.1
Adds support for Apple Silicon devices (MacOs on ARM processor)
Adds OcrInput.SaveAsImages() for saving input items as an image
Adds CropRectangle class which allows cropping using millimeter values or pixel values
Removes MinimumDpi. Please use TargetDpi to upscale your OCR input
Setting TargetDpi to null now prevents IronOcr from upscaling images, resulting in much smaller searchable PDFs
Fixes bug where Erosion filter applied Dialation and Dialation filter applied Erosion
Fixes bug where PDF pages were numbered incorrectly
Improves compatibility across various Linux distributions