What is OCR and How does it Work
2024-04-18 11:56:27 • Filed to: PDF Images • Proven solutions
Sometimes you need to scan documents that contain handwritten notes or pages from a printed book. This is where Optical Character Recognition (OCR) can come in handy. This helpful technology analyzes printed or handwritten text and turns it into an editable digital fil. In the article below, we'll discuss how this technology works and why it's so useful.
What Is OCR
OCR creates a digital copy of handwritten, printed or typed characters that have been scanned. This technique is widely used for data importing, especially for different types of data recoreded on paper, be it invoices, passports, documents, business cards, letters or printouts.
When the text is digitized, searching and editing the text can be done electronically. Plus the storage is more compact and documents can be displayed online.
How Does OCR Work
When a printed or handwritten page is scanned, it is saved as a bit-mapped file of TIF format. We can read this image when it is displayed on the screen. However, to the computer, it is only a series of white and black dots. It looks at every line of the image and determines if the series of dots match a particular number or letter.
Benefits of OCR
1. Searching and Manipulating Data
The ability of OCR to create a text version of scanned documents makes it possible to search for text and locate sections of the document by searching for keywords. It also allows you to edit the document with a word processor.
2. Help for the Blind and Visually Impaired
Screen readers can decode machine-readable text and read out the words on screen so visually impaired people can understand.
3. Faster Data Entry
Generally, OCR can greatly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of office work. This is because in most offices, there is a lot of scanning with a high number of documents, and there is a great need for high productivity and more efficient processes.
What OCR Software Can Do for You
If you want your image-based or scanned PDF to be searchable and editable, all you need to do is find the right OCR software, like Wondershare PDFelement - PDF Editor. This multilingual OCR software can automatically detect and recognize text from scanned documents, enabling you to easily copy, extract, search, and edit content.
In addition to OCR, PDFelement also integrates PDF creation, editing, and conversion into one package. You can edit PDF text, images and pages, annotate and remark PDFs, or convert PDF to or from various other file types.
Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!
Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!
Buy PDFelement right now!
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Audrey Goodwin
chief Editor