Optical Character Recognition Overview: How OCR Works
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is an advanced feature that allows users to transform paper documents and images into editable PDFs. This can be done with the use of a scanner, and with OCR features that can be activated once a document has been successfully scanned through a PDF application such as Soda PDF.
The goal is to transform a picture of a text into the text itself. What does this mean? Imagine you have an image containing words (e.g. a JPEG of a restaurant menu). With OCR software, you can scan the image of the restaurant menu and transform it into an editable PDF document. In other words, you will be able to modify the text that was previously a static image.
Benefits of using an OCR program
The benefits of using OCR software are manifold, the main one being the amount of time it will save you in the long run. Instead of having to rewrite an entire document to have a digital and editable copy of it on your computer, you can simply scan your paper document and activate the OCR feature.
It will also save you time because you won’t have to manually search through a pile of papers if you’re looking for a particular document. Once your files are digitized, you can just search for specific keywords on your computer. You can even run searches within each PDF if you just want to find a word in that particular document.
Soda PDF’s OCR feature also allows users to choose between manual and automatic text recognition. The manual function gives you the freedom to decide how the OCR engine will interact with your images (i.e., adjusting the fields to recognize the text within an image).
This advanced tool will recognize text within documents, images, and even handwritten notes. It can be extremely handy for industry professionals such as lawyers, doctors, and teachers.
Using Soda PDF’s OCR Software Online
What’s great about Soda PDF is that it also offers an online PDF solution for your OCR needs. You can easily recognize text within your documents and images on the go, directly through your web browser. Simply visit Soda PDF Online and get OCR-ing.
OCR Search
Soda PDF’s OCR Search is for users who are looking to search & recognize text within images or scanned documents. We recommend this tool for those who need to search documents for similarities when comparing contracts or invoices, for example.
OCR Edit
Our OCR Edit feature is for those who are in need of a simple solution for turning scanned documents into editable PDFs. With OCR Edit, you can not only scan and recognize text within images or scanned documents, but you can then edit the words you identify, allowing you to easily create editable PDFs from any printed document!
Automatic or Manual: What’s your text transmission?
Soda PDF even allows you to choose between automatic or manual text recognition.
Choose whether you wish for our OCR feature to automatically scan your image, or images, within your PDF for recognizable text. Or, should you prefer to manually select the text within an image for recognition, you can choose OCR Manual instead.
Please note, depending on which OCR tool you choose, OCR Auto or OCR Manual will only be able to recognize and identify the text within these images of your PDF document. If you want to be able to modify the text, not just identify text, then we recommend using our OCR Edit tool, which allows you to modify the text within any image file or scanned document.
We highly recommend OCR Edit for those who are looking to modify scanned documents. Our OCR software will help you increase your productivity and easily help you manage printed documents by turning them into digitized files with ease.
