Extract text from an image

OCR stands for optical character recognition: software examines the shapes in a picture and works out which letters they represent, turning a flat image into real, selectable text.

It is what lets you copy a paragraph out of a photographed page, search a scanned document, or get a phone number out of a screenshot without typing it in by hand.

The everyday reason is to avoid retyping. A photographed page of a book, a receipt, a screenshot of a message, a slide from a lecture — all of these hold text you may need in a document, and OCR saves you copying it out character by character.

It also makes content usable. Text pulled out of an image can be searched, translated, read aloud by a screen reader, or corrected — none of which is possible while the words are just pixels.

Accuracy depends mostly on the image. A flat, sharp, well-lit photo taken straight on will be read far better than a dim, angled snapshot, and larger text is easier than small print.

Choosing the right language matters just as much, particularly for Arabic: a page of Arabic read with the English model will come out as nonsense. Handwriting remains hard for any OCR engine, so expect printed text to work much better.