Nowadays, extracting text from images has been made very simple and easy thanks to the presence of dedicated online tools. With these tools, you can simply upload or enter your image, start the process and then save the results on your device.
If you’re not very familiar with how this whole process works, don’t worry. In this post, that is what we’re going to be helping you with.
Let’s get started.
Steps to Extract Text from Images Using an Online Converter
When talking about the steps that you have to follow, we’ll also generally discuss the working and interfaces of some random online image-converting tools.
Since the functionality is very similar on all the tools available online, you can easily follow along with the steps regardless of whichever one you choose.
1. Find a Tool
The first thing that you have to do to extract text from an image is to find an image-to-text extractor itself. You’ll find these types of tools on the internet easily if you search for the words ‘OCR tool‘ or ‘image to text converter‘. But there’s a slight hitch.
There are actually a lot of such tools available online. Choosing the right one can be difficult if you’re not very familiar with the features that you have to look for as well as the things you have to avoid. If you want to find the right image to text converter, you can look for one that has the following features:
- A clear and transparent privacy policy
- Options to upload image files directly from your device
- Options to download or save the extracted text
- Preview of selected image for double-checking
- Quick processing
2. Import Your Image to the Tool
After finding the tool, the next step that you have to take is importing the image.
Now, depending on the tool you’ve selected, you’ll be able to do this in a number of ways. Most image-to-text converters allow users to upload PNG and JPG files directly from their local storage. Some of them also support cloud storage integrations.
And in some tools, you can simply enter the URL of the image to fetch it directly from the internet.
So, for this step, you have to use whichever method is available on your particular tool and import the image file.
3. Edit and Adjust the Image
This feature is not available in every image-to-text converting tool. It’s a special perk that is offered by some.
Basically, once you import your image to the tool, you can edit and adjust it before starting the process. For example, you can crop the image to a specific size, or you can rotate it to the correct orientation.
By editing the image as per your requirement, you will be able to make sure that the text is accurately extracted later on.
If this feature is not available in your selected tool, you can skip this step.
4. Start the Process and Finalize the Results
After uploading and editing your image, the next thing that you have to do is simply start the extraction process. Depending on the tool that you’re using, this process could either take a couple of seconds or a few minutes.
Then, once the extraction is complete and the text is presented in the output box, you can go ahead and copy it to your clipboard. Or, if you want to save it for later use, you can download the output instead. However, this feature may not be available in some tools.
Some Tips for Effective Image-to-Text Extraction…
While the general process of image-to-text conversion is given above, there are some tips that you can follow to make the process smoother. Some of those tips are given below:
- Make sure that the image you’re using is not blurred, hazy, or darkened. If the image has any such effect on it, it can adversely affect the accuracy of the extraction process.
- Make sure that the tool you pick supports the format of the file you have to convert. It can be a pain to first convert your image to the format supported by the tool and then upload it.
- Make sure that the tool you select is free to use throughout the process. Some tools can start off nice and well, but they can ask for a sign-up or a payment before giving out the results.
Conclusion
Image-to-text conversion is simple and easy. Some time ago, when technology wasn’t that rampant, the only way to extract text from an image was to do it manually. But nowadays, there are a lot of online tools that can do the same job for us in a matter of seconds.
In the post above, we’ve mentioned the steps that you can follow to easily use an image-to-text converting tool whenever you want.