FreeOCR 5.0

Free FreeOCR allows you to extract the text from an image file or a PDF document
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As it can be easily deduced from its name, FreeOCR is a free optical character recognition software tool that allows you to extract the text from an image file or a PDF document. The program includes scanning capabilities so that you can also convert your printed documents into e-text by simply scanning them. FreeOCR uses the Tesseract OCR engine, which was created and is maintained by Google.

The program offers a simple and intuitive user interface that is divided into two panels. The left one is for the source PDF document or image file (which usually comes from your TWAIN or WIA scanner). This panel allows you to rotate the image clockwise and counter-clockwise and to select a particular portion of the image where you want to extract the text from. The right panel, on the other hand, will show you the resulting text after the OCR process. This panel allows you to save the text as a plain text file, export it to MS Word or RTF formats, or copy the text to the clipboard among other helpful options. You can even specify some replacement strings for the program to correct certain OCR errors automatically.

Summing up, FreeOCR is a handy and free OCR tool that will be very helpful to you if you have moderate needs to process documents with OCR technology. The program supports all major image file formats including multi-page TIFF documents. Also, FreeOCR comes with support for eleven popular languages, though you can download over 120 additional ones from Tesseract project's download page. I would definitely recommend this tool for general-purpose OCR tasks.

RS Senior editor
Ricardo Soria
Editor rating:
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Review summary

Pros

  • Includes scanning capabilities to transform printed information into e-text
  • Comes with support for eleven popular languages
  • Allows you to export the resulting text into MS Word and RTF formats

Cons

  • Does not support scanning into PDF format yet

Comments (4)

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Your vote:

J
rating Jane Horton
Easy to use with a good recognition engine. Sure it can't handle handwriting, but it's free.

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G
Guest
This software converts tiff images, but if some error occurs, can I edit them manually?

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G
Guest
I wanted to take my hand-written notes and convert them into editable text, but I just ended up with a load of images. I was hoping it would be intelligent enough to do it, but it didn't.

I mean, it makes sense that it would be possible to convert hand-written notes, right?! Sure, you would maybe have to program your style so it knows how to translate your stuff better, but it doesn't have a learning feature. Disappointing.

Was it helpful?  yes(0) no(1) | Reply

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