I still remembered when I was at the age of 15, someone asked me whether can they scan a document with a scanner and then edit it with Microsoft Word because it’s troublesome to retype everything on the form again. That time I wasn’t very good in computers and technology. I knew that scanning the form would become an image file and it’s not possible to edit the text in the image with Microsoft Word.

Actually it’s possible with OCR technology. Back then I didn’t know anything about OCR. OCR stands for Optical character recognition and is a mechanical or electronic translation of images into editable text. Once I a had a task where I am given just a few days to type out everything on a lot of scanned images. What I did was used an OCR software to convert image to text. Since Microsoft Office has spell check, I can very quickly identify the wrong words and auto correct it. OCR is much easier and faster compared to typing what’s on the scanned image.

If you didn’t know, the most popular OCR software is Omnipage and FineReader. If you’re thinking buying and using it to perform OCR, you better think twice because Omnipage cost a whopping $499.99 and FineReader cost $249. Of course, the bulky and expensive OCR software has a lot of other powerful features but if you only want to convert image to text, here are a few FREE OCR software which you can consider.

1. TopOCR
FREE TopOCR
TopOCR uses the latest most powerful neural net pattern recognition and digital signal processing techniques for the best possible OCR results from digital cameras. This OCR technology is the result of years of research and development in the United States and Europe. Unlike OCR applications designed for scanners, TopOCR understands that images from digital cameras and smartphones have more variation in image quality. As a result, the OCR processing in TopOCR is more robust and utilizes sophisticated image processing algorithms that the older OCR programs completely lack.
[ Download TopOCR ]

2. FreeOCR.net
FREE FreeOCR.net
Softi FreeOCR is a complete scan and OCR program including the Windows compiled Tesseract free ocr engine. It includes a Windows installer and It is very simple to use and supports multi-page tiff’s, fax documents as well as most image types including compressed Tiff’s which the Tesseract engine on its own cannot read .
[ Download FreeOCR.net ]

3. SimpleOCR
FREE SimpleOCR
SimpleOCR is the popular freeware OCR software with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. SimpleOCR is also a royalty-free OCR SDK for developers to use in their custom applications. If you have a scanner and want to avoid retyping your documents, SimpleOCR is the fast, free way to do it. The SimpleOCR freeware is 100% free and not limited in any way. Anyone can use SimpleOCR for free–home users, educational institutions, even corporate users.
[ Download SimpleOCR ]

4. Microsoft Office Document Imaging
FREE Microsoft Office Document Imaging
Although Microsoft Office is not free, but I believe a large number of users has Microsoft Office installed. Microsoft Office Document Imaging tool can be found at your Start Menu -> Programs -> Microsoft Office -> Microsoft Office Tools. To recognize text in image, just load the TIFF image file, and click at the eye icon at the toolbar. Moving your cursor to the icon will show the info Recognize Text Using OCR.

So which free OCR software is the best? All of them worked great and it’s up to you to test and see which works the best for your image files. TopOCR mention a lot in their website that it is a free OCR Software for Camera or Smartphone. I’ve tested it on a TIFF image file and it has an 100% accurate OCR result. As for the expensive FineReader and OmniPage, it has already been pirated. NoPE released FineReader crack (Abbyy.FineReader.Pro.Multilanguage.v9.CD-NoPE) and SHooTERS released OmniPage serial number (Nuance.OmniPage.Professional.v16.0.Multilingual-SHooTERS).

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