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Top 9 Image-to-Text Converters for Every Platform

These are the best image-top-text converters you can find.

With optical character recognition (OCR), you can convert a scanned document into an editable and searchable text file. It has various applications and may be accomplished partly by using open-source tools.

Picture this. Your workmate sent you a photo of a document. You need to pass the said document to your boss. Of course, to be formal, you want the document to be proper. But the deadline is near, so you can't type the document's content as it would take time. An image-to-text converter would help you.

With a photo-text converter, you only need to copy and paste the extracted text into a new document. Fortunately, there are many tools like it. Some are for computers, some work on the web, and others are for mobile phones. Thus, no matter where you are or what device you use, there is a tool you can rely on. Let us introduce you to the 9 best image-to-text converters.

Tip: If you need an OCR tool to convert images in JPG, PNG, or PDF format to text, Wondershare PDFelement is the ideal solution. It is capable of recognizing text from images in over 20 languages. After performing OCR, you can seamlessly edit, copy, or export the text to a separate file in various formats. This tool is compatible with Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android platforms.

image to text converter software

Our Top List for You

Tool Name
Platform
Price
Limitations
PDFelement Windows, macOS, Android, iOS Starts at $79.99 The free version doesn’t have all the features offered.
SimpleOCR Windows, Mac Free Lacks advanced tools.
Capture2Text Windows Free Not beginner friendly.
HiPDF Web $5.99 per month Needs a subscription.
Prepostseo Web Free There are limited things you can do with the free version.
OnlineOCR Web Free Does not support batch conversion.
Adobe Scan Android, iOS Free Needs a subscription to edit.
Text Fairy Android Free OCR is not working sometimes.
CamScanner Android, iOS Starts at $4.99 per month Needs to be registered and subscribed.

Best Image-to-Text Software on Windows

PDFelement for Windows

best image to text converter

Wondershare PDFelement - PDF Editor Wondershare PDFelement Wondershare PDFelement often comes up in conversations regarding documents. That's because of its wealth of helpful features. Among these features is the optical character recognition (OCR) tool. It is the technology that allows you to convert images into editable text.

Pros

Has many features

Reliable OCR

Fast and accurate

Supports many languages

Cons

You need a subscription to access all of the features.

Platforms: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS

Price: Starts at $79.99

Languages: PDFelement supports 29 languages. It includes common ones like English and Spanish and others like Polish, Turkish, and Ukrainian.

How To Use PDFelement as an Image-to-Text Converter on Windows

  • Create a PDF using the image you want to convert to text using PDFelement.
  • Click OCR from the right-side floating menu or Perform OCR at the top-right of the document page.
  • Select Scan to Editable Text under Scan Options.
  • Specify the pages of the PDF you want to convert to text. (Optional)
  • Select the languages used in the image. Please note that you can select more than three. However, that would slow down the conversion.
  • Click Apply and wait for the conversion to finish.
  • Edit or copy & paste the extracted text as needed.

SimpleOCR

SimpleOCR is a completely free image-to-text converter. As its name suggests, SimpleOCR is simple. That's both a blessing and a curse. It means SimpleOCR is beginner friendly, even though its interface could use some updating. Unfortunately, it also means SimpleOCR does not have the advanced scanning options other options have.

If you are a developer, you would also appreciate the royalty-free OCR SDK that comes with SimpleOCR.

Pros

Easy to use

Cons

Does not support handwriting

Fails to recognize text written in non-standard fonts

Reliability plummets if the photo is blurry or taken with a low-quality camera

Platforms: Windows, macOS

Price: Free

Languages: SimpleOCR has Tesseract 3.02 language support. So, it supports over 30 languages, including English, Swedish, Tagalog, and many others.

SimpleOCR is a fantastic option if you don't need much besides the basic OCR function.

Capture2Text

Capture2Text is a free OCR tool licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. It is fast and reliable, despite being freeware.

Capture2Text allows you to OCR a portion of your screen through keyboard shortcuts. Since you can select a specific part of the document, the program doesn't need to scan the whole page. Thus, Capture2Text's commendable speed. However, some may have trouble memorizing the hotkeys.

Pros

Fast

Reliable

Supports many languages

Cons

Not beginner friendly

Platforms: Windows 7 - 10

Price: Free

Languages: Capture2Text recognizes text written in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. But if you are tech-savvy, you can add more.

Capture2Text is one of the best options to avoid scanning the whole image.

HiPDF

HiPDF is a web-based service that has answers to all your PDF needs. It offers file conversion, PDF merging, editing, compressing, and more. Among its conversion options is image-to-text.

The best thing about HiPDF, aside from being feature-rich, is its security. You can rest assured that the service will delete your file an hour after using the converter.

Pros

Fast

Easy to use

Secure

Supports many languages

Cons

The image-to-text converter is a premium feature.

Platforms: Web

Price: Free to $5.99 per month

Languages: HiPDF's OCR supports over 20 languages, including Korean, Bahasa Indonesia, and Hungarian.

How To Use HiPDF's OCR Tool

  • Ensure you are subscribed to HiPDF Pro.
  • Select Image to Text from HiPDF's toolbox.
  • Click Choose File or drag and drop the image you want to convert to the given field. Optionally, click the arrow down button to get the image from your DropBox, Box, or OneDrive.
  • Click OCR Settings to select the language of the text in the document and your desired output format.
  • When happy with your choices, click Submit.
  • Finally, click Convert.
  • Wait for HiPDF to finish converting the file, then click Download.

Prepostseo

Prepostseo is a website developed by two brothers to help improve SEO for websites. It offers tools like a plagiarism checker and a paraphrasing tool. Interestingly, it also provides an OCR tool that lets users convert photos to text. And the OCR tool is reliable, fast, and accurate.

Pros

Supports many input types

Supports many languages

Fast

Allows batch conversion

It can extract complex mathematical equations

Cons

The free version only allows 3 images per batch.

Ads plague the interface in the free version.

Platforms: Web

Price: Free, but a Pro subscription makes it faster and allows more images per batch. A subscription starts at $10 per month.

Languages: Prepostseo recognizes over 30 languages, including English, Malayalam, and Thai.

Prepostseo is a very reliable tool with an interface that makes sense- everything is where you'd expect them to be.

OnlineOCR

OnlineOCR is a free online image-to-text converter. It allows you to convert images to text, Excel, or Word quickly. Also, you can put the extracted text on your clipboard, so you don't need to download the converted file.

Pros

Easy to use

Supports many languages

Quickly save extracted file as TXT, DOCX, or XLSX

Cons

Does not have batch conversion

Platforms: Web

Price: Free

Languages: OnlineOCR recognizes 46 languages, like Greek, Icelandic, Macedonian, and more.

OnlineOCR is as straightforward as it gets: upload a photo, convert it to text, and you are done.

Best Picture to Text Converter for iOS/Android

PDFelement for iOS

We have mentioned PDFelement for Windows in the previous part. Actually, here you will know how to convert images to text with its mobile app.

Price: Free, $6.99 per mouth, $29.99 per year, and $39.99 perpetual.

How To Use PDFelement as an Image-to-Text Converter on Your iPhone

  • Open the image as PDF in PDFelement.
  • Tap the more icon in the upper-right corner, and find Recognize.
  • Choose OCR PDF and tap Next.
  • Select the Language of your document and tap Next. Then your image will be recognized in seconds.
image text to text converter

Experts approve PDFelement's OCR tool, so rest assured that it is reliable.

Adobe Scan

Adobe Scan is a mobile app from the makers of Adobe Acrobat and the PDF file type. It allows you to scan documents so you can later edit them on your PC.

Pros

OCR ensures text in the image is readable

Feature-rich

Free

Cons

You can only edit the scanned text if you have an Adobe Cloud Subscription.

Platforms: Android, iOS

Price: The app is free, but a subscription for editing starts at $5.83 per month.

Languages: Adobe Scan supports 17 languages, including Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Norwegian, Russian, and English.

Adobe Scan is a great text scanner, but please note that it requires you to pay to edit the text extracted by the app.

Text Fairy

Text Fairy is a free OCR app for Android made by an indie developer from Sweden. Admittedly, you can't rely on Text Fairy every time. It struggles to recognize text from blurry images or photos taken by low-quality cameras. But when it works, Text Fairy shows great accuracy.

Pros

Supports many languages

Easy to use

Cons

Often fails to recognize

Slow

Platforms: Android

Price: Free

Languages: Text Fairy supports 110 languages, including Albanian, Italian, Indonesian, and more. Some are already in the app after downloading Text Fairy, while you need to download the other languages.

Text Fairy performs as you would expect an indie app to perform. What it can accomplish is impressive, but it needs more time to develop.

CamScanner

CamScanner is a free-to-download image-to-text converter app. It is fast and reliable. However, you need to get the paid version to use the OCR. Unregistered users can only OCR images once.

Pros

Recognize many languages

Fast

Feature-rich

Cons

The free version is very limited.

Platforms: Android, iOS

Price: Starts at $4.99 per month

Languages: CamScanner's OCR recognizes 16 languages, including Arabic, German, Slovak, and more.

CamScanner is one of the premium options for mobile phones; as you would expect, it is a powerful image-to-text converter app.

Conclusion

The best OCR tool for you depends on your budget, needs, and the device that you use. Regardless of the platform, you can always rely on HiPDF, a web-based program. You can access it from any internet-connected device with a browser. Meanwhile, if you are on Windows or Mac or have no internet connection, PDFelement is an excellent option.