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How to copy text from an image or screenshot

You cannot select the words in a picture, because to a computer a picture is just coloured dots. Reading the dots back into letters is called OCR, optical character recognition. It is good enough now to copy a message from a screenshot or a paragraph from a photo of a page, and it can be done without uploading anything.

Updated 2 min read

Copy the text from a picture

  1. Add the picture to Image to Text. Several pictures can be read at once.
  2. Tick the language of the text. For two languages in one picture, tick both.
  3. Tick "Join the lines of each paragraph" if you want sentences rather than lines broken where the picture breaks them.
  4. Press Read the text. A picture takes a few seconds.
  5. Press Copy the text, or download the .txt file.

What makes the result better or worse

  • Sharp beats blurred. A screenshot is almost always better than a photo of a screen.
  • Straight beats slanted. Photograph a page from directly above, with the whole page in view and even light.
  • Printed text reads well. Handwriting mostly does not.
  • Size matters. Very small text, such as the fine print of an agreement in a phone photo, may need a closer picture.
  • Plain backgrounds are easier than patterned ones. Text over a photo or a gradient is hard.

Check what comes out

OCR makes small mistakes: a zero for the letter O, an l for a 1, a missing full stop. Always read the text against the picture before you rely on it, and take extra care with numbers, names and amounts. The result tells you how sure the reading was, and names the pictures it was less sure of.

Pictures of whole documents

  • For a multi-page scan saved as a PDF, use OCR PDF to make it searchable, or PDF to Text to save its words.
  • For a photo of a page taken at an angle, straighten it with Scan to PDF first.
  • To turn a scan into an editable document, use PDF to Word with "Read scanned pages" ticked.

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