How-To

Extract Text from Images with OCR

April 18, 2025·5 min read

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets you extract editable text from images, photos, and scanned documents. Instead of manually retyping content from a screenshot or a printed page, OCR does it for you in seconds. Modern OCR engines can handle handwritten text, multiple languages, and complex layouts with impressive accuracy.

How OCR technology works

OCR software analyzes an image to identify regions that contain text. It then segments individual characters, compares them against known letter patterns, and outputs editable text. Modern OCR uses neural networks trained on millions of document samples, achieving accuracy rates above 99% for printed text in good lighting conditions.

Best practices for accurate results

Image quality is the single biggest factor in OCR accuracy. Use high-resolution images with good contrast between text and background. Avoid shadows, skewed angles, and partially obscured text. For scanned documents, scan at 300 DPI or higher. Straighten the image before processing if it is tilted or rotated.

Common use cases

OCR is used to digitize printed books and archives, extract data from receipts and invoices, convert scanned contracts to editable documents, and copy text from screenshots. Students use it to capture text from textbook photos, and businesses use it to automate data entry from paper forms.

Extract text with SquishConvert

SquishConvert Pro includes built-in OCR that supports over 100 languages. Upload any image or scanned PDF, and get editable text output in seconds. The extracted text can be copied, downloaded as a TXT file, or used directly. Perfect for quick text extraction without installing desktop OCR software.