Michal Ždanský SOCIETY ABBYY is one of the leading providers of text recognition software using OCR technology. All you have to do is submit a scanned document to the program, and after chewing it, a finished Word document will come out, including formatting, with a minimal amount of errors. Thanks to the TextGrabber app, this is also possible on your phone.
TextGrabber it uses similar OCR technologies designed for mobile devices and works on the same principle as the desktop version. Just take a photo of the document or select one from the album, and the application will take care of the rest. The result is plain text that you can send by e-mail, save to the clipboard or search on the Internet. For example, mobile OCR technology is also used by application for reading business cards.
OCR or optical character recognition (from the English Optical Character Recognition) is a method that, using a scanner, enables the digitization of printed texts, which can then be worked with as normal computer text. The computer program either converts the image automatically or must learn to recognize the characters. The converted text almost always needs to be thoroughly proofread, depending on the quality of the original, because the OCR program does not recognize all letters correctly.
- Wikipedia
The success of the recognition depends very much on the quality of the photo. Although the application also offers the option to turn on the flash on the iPhone 4, this option does not work for some reason and will have to rely on ambient lighting. If you manage to take a bright photo with perfectly legible text, you will see a recognition success rate of around 95%, with crumpled paper or poor lighting, the success rate drops dramatically.
From what I noticed, the application most often confuses "é" and "č". Cutting out unnecessary parts can also help a little with recognition, which will also shorten the recognition time, which anyway takes a few tens of seconds at most. Hopefully, the authors will be able to at least get the iPhone's diode working so that the user does not have to take pictures of the document several times due to poor lighting conditions.
The possibilities of using OCR on the mobile platform are huge. While until now we could only take a picture of a document and then at least slightly edit it into a document form using various "scanning applications", thanks to TextGrabber we can send the text directly to an e-mail. In addition, the application can save the photos taken in the camera album, for example to review the text.
A history of all scans is also useful. If you did not send the recognized text when you created it, it will remain stored in the application until you delete it yourself. ABBYY TextGrabber can recognize around 60 languages, among which of course Czech and Slovak are not missing. If you often work with various text materials, for example when studying, TextGrabber can be a useful helper for you
Evernode does the same and for free
A long time ago, I installed the OCRTOOL program, which mainly can translate a scanned page directly. So when I didn't fully understand what some programs show me in the help, I took a picture of them, and I translated it directly through this program.
Of course, I took a picture of them via the printscreen function (home + power button)
I've had this app for a while now, used it a few times and was satisfied. The text taken from the laptop screen was a problem, but otherwise cool. Once I took a picture of the text of a quiz (a story with a plot and a search for a solution) and the application offered to search for the result on the Internet after OCR, so I had it solved in a few seconds - pleasant surprise and admiration of the surroundings - not the admiration of my person, but the special one phone - iPhone. Not that it's beyond the power of other phones, but having the right, quick and simple solution at the right moment is the magic. And I had it by accident. :-)
Can he rotate pictures yet? I have heard that if you have an image rotated 90 degrees in the application, for example loaded from the photo library, the application will read it and report that it cannot be read. When it is recorded in an external app and then run again, TextGrabber will try it.
I tried it here and it doesn't work.
Well, this is a real tip, I have to try it.
So iOS 14.1 already offers it directly in Photos??