Top PDF Software – Amazon Textract Review

What is Amazon Textract? - Quora

Are asking a similar question? Don't worry because this post will explain all there is about Amazon Textract and how to get a Textract OCR PDF. We'll also review the upsides and downsides of using Amazon Textract and the perfect alternative to this cloud-based OCR service. Are you ready to learn? Hope so!

Part 1. What does the Amazon Textract Service do?

Amazon Textract is a desktop service that uses advanced ML (machine learning) to extract handwriting and printed text from any document or image. This OCR software can extract data from tables, IDs, invoices, passports, and other documents in minutes. Below are its top features:

• Extract text from any document: With AWS OCR, you can extract editable and actionable text from pictures and documents. It uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) and ML (Machine Learning) to accurately scan and extract text from forms, tables, images, PDFs, etc. It also works with professional documentation like receipts and invoices.
• Query-based extraction: Amazon Textract uses query responses to analyze and specify the type of data you want to extract. You can ask for specific information like the DOB or ID number, and Amazon Textract will do all the heavy lifting. For example, you can ask Textract, "What's the customer's Social Security Number?"
• Add human review and feedback: Another exciting feature of Amazon Textract is the inbuilt human review. After extracting printed text and handwriting from a document, this OCR software lets you add reviews and feedback to show your thoughts easily. Interestingly, it uses AI to give the correct feedback without any manual input.
• Pricing: Amazon Textract uses the pay-as-you-use subscription plan. This means there's no minimum fee or upfront commitment. That said, the free tier allows you to scan and extract text from 1,000 pages per month. If this doesn't fully cater for your needs, you can check out the multiple subscriptions that can reach $70 per month.

Part 2. Technology - How AWS Textract works?

If you're still a beginner with Amazon Web Service Textract, you might be wondering how to download Textract OCR for Windows or Mac. But on the contrary, Textract is a web-based service that only requires you to set up an AWS account and start scanning and extracting data.

To create an Amazon Web Service (AWS) account, you'll need to provide information like email, password, username, address, phone number, etc. After successfully filling the virtual form, link a payment method and choose a pricing plan. And as said before, you can use the free tier plan to scan up to 1,000 pages per month.

After creating an account, launch Amazon Textract and input the document that you want to scan and analyze. This can be images, sales orders, invoices, tax documents, IDs, passports, etc. The added document will be saved in a Data Lake.

Now Amazon Textract will automatically initiate document analysis using the Lambda function and create a block of objects. Usually, most scanned documents have blocks of pages, lines, text, form data, tables and cells, and selection elements.

After scanning and analyzing the document, AWS Textract will extract the required information using JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). The output will be auto-indexed to allow seamless document search when it is ready.

Part 3. Pros and cons of using AWS Textract

Pros:

- Seamless setup with AWS Services:

Because Textract is part of the expansive Amazon Web Service, syncing the extracted data with other AWS services is quite effortless using an add-on. You can save your extracted information to Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), Amazon Aurora, and Amazon DynamoDB.

- Safe and secure:

Amazon Textract uses all the safety measures laid down by Amazon Web Service. This makes it one of the safest OCR programs for data protection. So, don't worry about any data leakage to third parties.

Cons:

- Strictly cloud-based service:

Amazon Textract is a 100% cloud-based service. This means the service may not be available in some regions. Also, some companies and organizations have legal restrictions regarding uploading documents to the cloud. And another thing, when the cloud server breaks down, everything becomes unavailable.

- Restraining:

There are instances where you'll find that Amazon Textract doesn't accurately extract data. In that case, you'll need to manually go through the data to review, annotate, and verify everything. Of course, this can be time-consuming.

- Limited languages:

Amazon Textract supports just a handful of languages for text detection. It supports English, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian. Even worse, this AWS OCR doesn't output the input language.

Part 4. Best Amazon Textract alternative - A better, much simpler and more intuitive way to perform OCR tasks

Although Amazon Textract has some immense benefits, the drawbacks can be limiting. For example, you might struggle to use it if you don't understand anything about coding. Also, the fact that it's a cloud-based service may rule out some organizations from extracting Textract OCR PDF.

Because of these limitations, I recommend a more straightforward and more accurate offline OCR software in Wondershare PDFelement. It can easily recognize text in PDFs and other documents on your desktop or mobile phone.

You can access information on the various functional and unique features of PDFelement by using the link below.

Below are the main OCR features:

- Easily extract data from scanned PDFs

With this offline OCR software, you can convert your scanned PDF files to editable and searchable text. You can extract data from tables, forms, rows, and other text documents. What's better, you can scan documents in batch, making it perfect for huge organizations with significant data to scan.

Edit scanned and extracted text

After scanning and extracting OCR, PDFelement lets you retouch the text with unique fonts and add new text. That's not all. This OCR program enables you to add annotations like shapes and drawings as well as add human comments and feedback.

- Multiple languages supported

Now this is where PDFelement beats Amazon Textract hands down. This OCR program supports 20+ languages, including French, Bulgarian, Chinese, English, and other popular languages. In addition, you can export the scanned documents to a different language.

Follow these simple steps to scan and convert PDF to OCR with PDFelement:

Step 1. Install Wondershare PDFelement and run it. Then, tap the OCR PDF tab to load the PDF file to scan and convert.

Step 2. Next, you'll see a pop-up window, where you'll cchoose the scan option, page range, and language. In this example, select English.

Step 3. Tap Apply, and PDFelement will begin scanning and analyzing your PDF file.

Step 4. Once the scanning is successful, you can edit your PDF file and convert it to PPT, image, text, PDF, or Excel. It's that easy!

Conclusion

Any questions about Amazon Textract? I hope there's none after reading this detailed post. But if you're a beginner, avoid the complex AWS OCR and use the relatively easy PDFelement. Here, you don't need any prior PDF knowledge to scan, edit, and convert PDF. Thank us later!