Technology| Convert the image into the text to extract useful information
There was a time when scan documents or images of text and digit data were a headache to reproduce. In the past, if anyone encountered this situation, he had to type everything manually. It was a costly and time-consuming activity.
Optical character recognition technology has brought a revolution in people’s life. Inclusion and utilizing of optical character recognition have made it possible to convert typed images into text.
The image to convert could be a picture of a handwritten document or computerized printed version. This can be a photo or scanned document. These optical character recognition tools are consisting of a vast database of characters and digits picture with different fonts and styles.
Some of these tools also get help from spell checker to ensure accuracy. These tools do not guarantee 100% of accuracy, but there are very minor chances of mistakes which even can be ignored.
Origin and idea behind Initial concept:
The telegraphy and blind readable device technology have led to the creation of optical character recognition technology. .In 1914 a system turned into evolved by Emanuel Goldberg which turned into capable of examine the characters and remodel them to telegraph codes. Based on Emanuel Goldbergachievement in 1974 Ray Kurzweildeveloped Omni Font OCR which able to recognize printed text in different fonts.
Ray Kurzweil wanted the best use of his invention and decided to create the machine which can read the book and teach to blinds. In 1976 he successfully finished his product and launched for sale.
In a cloud computing environment, OCR was made available as an online service in 2000. With the invention of smartphones, OCR was also included in the shape of real-time translation and foreign language translation.
AI and OCR Technology:
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OCR technology is not possible without artificial intelligence. There are two methods to incorporate AI into OCR. The conventional way basically depends upon the templates. In this method, user use predefined approach and marks the text on template or scan documents. This marked text is used by the OCR engine to produce a result.
The results of these systems are highly accurate if the database layout and input layout have a similarity. The lack of templates in the database was a significant disadvantage of these tools. This approach results were getting adverse repute when they encounter with big data, different layout of the document, or any new type of document.
For example, invoice, auto entry system was working fine until a small number of the supplier. As the company grow and supplier increased with a different style of invoice. This conventional system fails to recognize them and start producing the wrong result.
A modern approach was adopted to overcome the disadvantages of the conventional system. In this approach, the OCR and machine learning model were used to produce accurate results. Supervised and unsupervised both learning model was incorporated to teach model.
This approach is much more reliable than conventional. But this approach requires a lot of data, high-quality trainer and much more trained professional to build an efficient model. This hard word is just required one time, the result is fantastic.
Application of technology converting image into the text to extract Useful information:
This is the technology information era, and every day there are new inventions taking place and advancement in existing. The technology of every kind is increasing, and the fastest inventions and advancement is happening in information technology.
The converting image into text has rapid growth and has made life easy in many fields. Here are some application examples to elaborate on the current use of the image to text technology:
1. Auto entry Accounting Software:
The software is being used to inter the detail of invoice, receipt, checks etc. to the accounting system. Scanned documents are provided to auto entry software. Software read the documents /images convert them into text and extract required information, and then pass that information to the specified field.
For example, if a purchase invoice image is given, the tool will extract, supplier detail, the purchase amount, sale tax or VAT, purchase date, and due date.
2. Passport readable Machine:
If you have traveled abroad, you have to produce the passport at the immigration counter. You may have noticed they scan your passport. Which is not just browse; your all information is read by the system by converting to text and stored in text form.
3. Business card Reader:
May every organization is using this small tool. This enables the user to extract all detail on the card and save into your contact list dairy.
4. Book Scanning and rewriting:
How tough this job will if you have to type the entire book again. No need to worry, technology have saved you from this killing hard word. You just need to scan the book and give it to the reader. It will convert for you all the data into text, which you can use for compiling new version.
5. Traffic Sign Recognition:
This example may be unfamiliar for most people as this technology is not yet widespread. Auto driving cars are using this technology. The sensors of auto-driving cars are getting information from their surrounding, converting them to readable form and passing to the controller. This takes decisions based on that information.
All the above is defining the technology of special kind. Which may not be useful for everyone?
What if everybody wishes to use that image to text converter?
No need to worry, a lot of online free tools is available to help you any time.
Free Online OCR:
The student, Teachers, researcher and most of the office worker encounter the need for converting images into text. For example, a student is writing assignment, and he got data in the shape of images which are also lengthy. Now if he types all the data, his precious time will be wasted.
What option he has, no worry just needs to type free online OCR, and dozens of free tools will be in their reach. Similarly, an office worker with the burden of a lot of work may encounter the same situation.
Here you can check the small list of some famous and excellent tools to help you in solving your problem:
Prepostseo Image to text is an online tool to extract textual content from picture documents at one click. It can convert the scan documents, a screenshot of webpage, or any other image which have some characters. For this, you just need to upload any image or you can paste url of the image in the tool and press the submit button to extract useful information from image.
This online image to text tool also allow to extract textual information from an image. For this purpose you need to open the browser and search for this tool, you have two options to add image through browse or drag an image. After getting the result you can copy the text and use further where you want.
Lightpdf online tool also provide OCR service to convert images, pdf files and any screenshot to a textual format. It can extract all the character from image, for this you can upload an image or pdf then you can choose the output format and click on convert. After completing the recognition process you can download this new file.
With little change in usage procedure, these all work the same way. They may ask you to save the picture in tool them click to generate or convert. The data will be converted, which you can copy and paste in your required place. These tools help to convert one by one page or multiple pages.
One thing to remember when doing your sensitive job! The accuracy of the result depends on the data provided, mean the quality of images. Do not blindly trust, you need to give some time to check the accuracy. Most of the time accuracy is 100%. But some time with poor input accuracy may be affected.
