FreeOCR 3.0

FreeOCR is a character recognition tool for Windows. It allows you to scan any image with text in it and convert it into a text file that can be edited with any text editor. The application can process text from three different sources: a scanner, an image file or a PDF file. The first one is the option that is most used with OCR applications. You scan a page of text and have the application process it to give you the text. FreeOCR can do the same from an image file or a PDF file.

Graphically, the application has two parts. The left one shows the source image (your scanned document, the image file or PDF document). To the right, is a text field where your results are going to be shown. By default, when you click on the "Start OCR" button, FreeOCR will process the full image on the left and give you the text that it can recognize on the right. Additionally, you can tell the application to only process a specific part of the image by selecting it with your mouse.

I found that FreeOCR does a great job of recognizing test when the image is clear. Thus, if you are scanning a text, try to use the best resolution possible. For text-only JPEG files, it did a great job, with only a few errors. The time that this application can save you is worth a lot of money, but the application is free.