How to get text out of an image or scan
- Choose one or more pictures, or a scanned PDF. For a PDF, you can limit which pages to read.
- Pick the language of the text. Add a second language if the page mixes two.
- Press Extract text, then copy the result, download it as a .txt file, or download a searchable PDF.
The text is read from each page one at a time, with a progress bar per page and a confidence score. Always check names, numbers, and dates against the original.
Questions
Is my picture or PDF uploaded?
No. The text recognizer runs inside your browser. Its program and language data are downloaded from this website, and your files never leave your device.
Which languages does it read?
English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese (simplified), and Japanese. Pick one, or add a second language for documents that mix two.
Why does the first run take longer?
The recognizer and the language data (about 1 to 3 MB per language) are downloaded once from this site and stored in your browser. After that, text is read without waiting for downloads.
How can I improve poor results?
Use a sharp, well-lit, straight-on picture, and pick the right language. For a page with scattered labels instead of paragraphs, try the Scattered text layout. Handwriting is not supported well.
What is a searchable PDF?
A PDF that looks exactly like your scan but has invisible text laid over it, so you can search, select, and copy words. Switch on “Also make a searchable PDF”, then download it after the text is read.
Credits
Built on Tesseract.js (Apache-2.0), Tesseract OCR engine and trained language data (Apache-2.0), PDF.js (Apache-2.0) and pdf-lib (MIT). OneTooling is not affiliated with these projects.