How Does OCR Technology Help to Extract Data from Images?

Extracting data from physical documents or images has become a breeze thanks to digital scanners. Digital files are usually in PDF format, which only allows you to view and read them without being able to edit them as you would with a word processor or other editing program. 

However, scanners allow you to save digital files on your computers as editable text. What scanners can you use to do this? Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology is.

What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

OCR is software that allows computers to comprehend the text in physical documents and convert them into codes. This means that the machine is reading text in form of codes using an optical sensor, for example, a camera or a laser scanner. 

The computer software then identifies the individual characters in your document and converts them into digital data. It is much easier for the human eye to recognize words and characters to interpret the text on physical paper, but for computers, the process can become a bit more complex.

This is where OCR technology jumps in! 

OCR technology helps you edit the text from scanned, handwritten digital documents so you can highlight it, make desirable edits, or rephrase the text as per requirements.

In addition to scanning documents for editing,  OCR is also useful for making full-text searches possible. 

Being a process of converting printed text into machine-readable data, OCR enables users to search, find and extract information from physical documents.

How OCR technology helps in extracting data from the images?

OCR technology helps in extracting data from scanned images and making them accessible for editing and searching. Most of the documents we used in our daily life are in digital forms and the text it contains is neither editable nor searchable. OCR comes in handy in all such situations. But how exactly it works to help you get the text from images? Here we will easily discuss the strenuous process. So, buckle up, and let’s get started!

The OCR technology follows the four fundamental procedures to perform the process.

1. The scanning process

The first and most important step of OCR technology begins with scanning a document, just as conventional scanners do. To get the clearest, most accurate, and blur-free representation of the original image, the OCR software must be presented with a well-lit, clutter-free image.

You must scan documents at the highest resolution possible. This will optimize the OCR software's chances of correctly recognizing the text.

It is best to calibrate the scanner using a sample document and re-calibrate it frequently during bulk scanning. This is the step where OCR classifies the light areas as background and the dark areas as text.

2. Image Processing 

The next step following scanning the image is image processing, which involves character recognition to take the process one step further.

The image processing is completed in several steps; 

Deskewing: the tool will set the alignment of the text in the image by either rotating or tilting it. This step is important to ensure that the text is well-oriented to not interfere with the scanning process. 

Despeckling: During this step, edges are smoothed out by eliminating imperfections such as tiny dust particles, stray dots or marks, or other digital artifacts. 

Text binarization: the next step is the process of converting a grayscale image into a black-and-white image, by stripping off color data and increasing the contrast of the image. This results in a black-and-white image with high contrast which further lessens the chances of incorrect character identification.

3. Character Recognition.

Probably the most important step is the character recognition step, which involves the most work. Here the OCR online converts the text images contain into machine language or binary codes.

It starts with an analysis of the formatting of the data, and then it moves on to identifying the locations of the text blocks and paragraphs.

Then it isolates the individual characters which is referred to as text segmentation. 

By comparing the raw pixel data of each character against an enormous database of alphanumeric characters, OCR software identifies the raw pixel data of each character.

This is called character identification and the latest OCR technology uses two methods to perform this job: 

• Pattern recognition

As the name indicates, it does pattern recognition. How does the OCR do this? Well, it is accomplished by analyzing each character as a whole. 

The software compares each character against the matrix of characters stored in its database. It only downsizes the method in that it only identifies characters stored in its databases without going beyond them.

• Feature extraction 

Then comes the feature extraction method which is considered a more powerful and versatile method used in OCR technology. The OCR breaks down data into individual features such as straight lines, curves, angles, and intersections. In the next step, it matches the presence of these physical features with the corresponding letter stored in its databases.

4. Data Verification

Here most of the work is completed. In data verification, the processed data is cross-checked against built-in dictionaries to come up with accurate and reliable result feedback. 

OCR software uses near-neighbor analysis to identify errors and correct them by looking for letters and words that are commonly seen together. This technology is also being used as a receipt OCR to scan and keep all your receipts in one place.

How can Ocronline.info help in extracting data from the images?

Ocronline.info is a free OCR software that can help you extract data from scanned images. 

It is an online tool that uses OCR technology to convert text into machine-readable data. This OCR online software reads the image and compares it to a database of pre-defined characters. It then identifies the character in the image, determines its location on the page, and translates it into an alphanumeric string.

The best thing about the tool is that it can read the text in JPG, PNG, or GIF format and converts it into editable and searchable words. 

Ocronline.info can analyze data in more than a hundred languages and flips them into text. 

You simply open the website and upload the image into its input box by either uploading it from your device or the drag-drop method. Keep in mind that it only takes JPG, PNG, PDF, or Gif formats. 

Next, click on “Browse Image” and click on “Convert”.

In a matter of seconds, the tool will convert the image into text which you can either copy or download into your system. Now you can convert it to any format you need for your specific application. For example, PDF or Microsoft Word documents are great for printing out copies of your document. Get started with OCR technology today and make image-to-text conversion easier than ever before!