OCR Tools
Not every document that has been typed out or written has been neatly uploaded to the Internet. Things such as handouts from your teacher or professor may be hard to read physically, or you may be worried about misplacing them despite their importance. Documents from a co-worker or your boss that were given to you physically but also need to be emailed or otherwise handled electronically can also be a huge inconvenience if they cannot simply be scanned, as the text may need to be cited, copied, or pasted. This is where optical character recognition technology comes in.
OCR enables documents that exist physically to be converted into a PDF readable by software such as Adobe Reader or your web browser of choice. Not only that, but you can select text as if you typed out the document then and there yourself! Outside of dedicated software like ABBYY FineReader, OCR is a feature that exists in software such as Evernote and Microsoft Office OneNote.
244 ShareX alternativesShareX is a free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and share it with a single press of a key. It also allows uploading images, text or other types of files to many supported destinations you can choose from.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
- PortableApps.com
- Steam
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Top ShareX Features
- Customizable
- Ad-free
- Capture Video
- Screenshot OCR
- Works Offline
- No registration required
- OCR
- Upload Screenshot
- Dark Mode
- Portable
- Color Picker
- No Tracking
50 Evernote alternativesEvernote is a cross-platform, freemium app designed for note taking, organizing, and archiving.
License model
- Freemium • Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Online
- Android
- iPhone
- Blackberry
- Android Tablet
- Windows Phone
- iPad
- Apple Watch
- Kindle Fire
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Top Evernote Features
- Cloud Sync
- Text formatting
- Works Offline
- Hyperlinks
- Folders
- OCR
- Dark Mode
- Handwritten Notes
- Support for MarkDown
- Calendar Integration
- IFTTT Integration
- Web Clipper
199 Greenshot alternativesGreenshot is a light-weight screenshot tool optimized for productivity with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) support. Save a screenshot or a part of the screen to a file within a second or load it up to an Internet-picture-storage and get a public accessible URL (Confluence...
License model
- Freemium • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
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Top Greenshot Features
- Lightweight
- Image Annotations
- Usability
- Annotate Screenshot
- Customizable
- Ad-free
- No registration required
- Works Offline
- Portable
- Full-page Screenshot
- Upload Screenshot
- OCR
License model
- Freemium • Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
- PortableApps.com
- Wine
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Top PDF-XChange Editor Features
- PDF annotation
- PDF OCR
- Add/remove pages
- Edit PDF
- Portable
- Split PDF files
- OCR
- Lightweight
- No registration required
- Dark Mode
- Combine PDF
- Works Offline
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Subtitle Edit Features
- Srt
- Auto Formatting
- Built-in translation
- Audio Extraction
- Support for Keyboard Shortcuts
- Sub
- Lightweight
- OCR
- Portable
- Multiple languages
45 NAPS2 alternativesNAPS2 is a document scanning application with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
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Top NAPS2 Features
- Scan to PDF
- OCR
- Multiple Profiles
- Split and merge PDF files
- Ad-free
- Portable
- Built-in viewer
- No registration required
- Lightweight
- Combine PDF
- Dark Mode
- Works Offline
56 OSS Document Scanner alternativesThe OSS Document Scanner is an Open Source app to scan all your documents. You either scan using your camera or by importing an image. The app will automatically detect you document within the photo and will crop the image.
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Top OSS Document Scanner Features
- Export to PDF
- Works Offline
- Built-in viewer
- OCR
- Mobile Scanner
- Ad-free
- No registration required
- Lightweight
- Dark Mode
- Screenshot OCR
- WebDAV Sync
104 Adobe Acrobat Reader alternativesView, sign, collaborate on and annotate PDF files with our free Acrobat Reader software. And to easily edit and convert your PDFs into file formats like Excel and Word, try out PDF editor and converter Acrobat Pro DC.
License model
- Freemium • Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Android
- iPhone
- Android Tablet
- iPad
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Top Adobe Acrobat Reader Features
- PDF annotation
- Edit PDF
- Fill PDF Forms
- Document Annotations
- Create PDF files
- Combine PDF
- Dark Mode
- Sign PDF files
- Lightweight
- OCR
- No registration required
- Works Offline
38 Ksnip alternativesKsnip is a Qt based cross-platform screenshot tool that provides many annotation features for your screenshots.
License model
- Free • Open Source
Application type
Platforms
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Snapcraft
- Flathub
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Top Ksnip Features
- Image Annotations
- Annotate Screenshot
- Blur Filter
- Edit screenshots
- Ad-free
- Lightweight
- Privacy focused
- No registration required
- Upload Screenshot
- Built-in viewer
- Works Offline
- OCR
62 PDF-XChange Viewer alternativesPDF-XChange Viewer is an alternative viewer for PDF files that enables you to view and annotate PDF files. You can add text, sticky notes, and other annotations and save them to the file, which will be compatible with the standard Adobe Acrobat Reader.
Top PDF-XChange Viewer Features
- PDF annotation
- Lightweight
- Portable
- PDF OCR
- OCR
- Extract annotation
- Customizable
- Clean design
- Note extraction
- Side-by-Side View
- Multiple languages
- Font identifier
146 Snipping Tool alternativesSnipping Tool is a screen capture utility that allows users to take screenshots of specific objects or full screens, annotate them, and save or share the captured images or videos.
License model
- Free • Proprietary
Application types
Platforms
- Windows
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Snipping Tool Features
- Annotate Screenshot
- Dark Mode
- OCR
- Bundled with Windows
72 Crow Translate alternativesCrow Translate is a simple and lightweight translator programmed in C++ / Qt that allows to translate and speak text using Google, Yandex and Bing translate API.
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Crow Translate Features
- Online translation
- Real-time translation
- OCR
- Sits in the System Tray
- Desktop Application
- Ad-free
- No Tracking
- Works Offline
- Privacy focused
84 ABBYY FineReader PDF alternativesABBYY FineReader PDF is an OCR software that provides unmatched text recognition accuracy and conversion capabilities, virtually eliminating retyping and reformatting of documents. Up to 190 languages are supported for text recognition.
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Top ABBYY FineReader PDF Features
- OCR
- Convert PDF to Word document
- Side-by-Side Comparison
- PDF annotation
- Edit PDF
- Lightweight
- Sign PDF files
- Image to text
- Convert PDF to image
- Create PDF files
- PDF OCR
- Convert images to PDF
9 Tesseract alternativesTesseract.js is a javascript library that gets words in almost any language out of images.
Tesseract Features
- OCR
190 Snagit alternativesThe ultimate screen capture tool. With Snagit’s capture, edit, organize and share technology… it’s easy to create engaging visuals that grab attention and keep it. Let images do the talking for you.
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Snagit Features
- Full-page Screenshot
- OCR
- Annotate Screenshot
- Upload Screenshot
- Edit screenshots
- Upload directly to Dropbox
- Multiple languages
- Freeform capture
- Upload directly to YouTube
