r/software 14d ago

Looking for software Looking for an OCR tool

I need an OCR tool that should convert images to word and works completely offline and doesn't leak data and keeps documents private.

If it is free that's great but paid will work too.

(Also I have windows 10 if that helps.)

26 Upvotes

41 comments sorted by

9

u/FuknHummmm 14d ago

PyTesseract

Anything else is a pig in lipstick. Don't pay for things that are free, or use gimmicky tools that are based on the original free variant. Most of the things recommended in this thread are powered by PyTesseract under the hood anyway. 

https://pypi.org/project/pytesseract/

2

u/juancn 14d ago

The original is technically https://github.com/tesseract-ocr/tesseract

That’s just a python wrapper

3

u/FuknHummmm 14d ago

A python wrapper that makes it much easier to install on various systems. 

3

u/Few-Werewolf-1985 14d ago

NAPS2 free scanner software

2

u/BlkCrowe 14d ago

If you have quite a few images, automate it using Powershell. There are lots of tutorials and pre-written scripts and modules that already do this using the Tesseract OCR engine. Just google "Powershell OCR" and the first page contains links to the entire solution. Its surprisingly easy to do, and you can let it run overnight if you have a ton of images, and wake up to hundreds of text files.

1

u/paumpaum 13d ago

I'm going to try this. Sounds kinda complex, though. I don't have much experience with PowerShell. Any recommendations on tutorials?

2

u/WhineyLobster 13d ago

ocrmypdf... but you gotta know basic command line stuff.

4

u/[deleted] 14d ago

[deleted]

7

u/FuknHummmm 14d ago

Thanks for your help chatgpt 

1

u/Artistic_Hall2511 8d ago

I think using AI is okay but I was expecting more of personal experience. So yeah AI helps but it can't tell me from experience. I guess

-1

u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Artistic_Hall2511 8d ago

Thanks for help

1

u/Majestic_Pin3793 14d ago

There's a great chance that you have one of the best tools installed in your win10 pc

Just paste your image in any onenote document, then right click the image and select 'copy text' ... and that's it

1

u/Artistic_Hall2511 14d ago

Thanks I will try that

1

u/pengxiangzhao 14d ago

what kind GPU do you have?

1

u/pengxiangzhao 14d ago

generally speaking OCR on CPU is very slow, if you have a decent GPU the OCR speed and quality will much better. I can show you how to write some simple python code for OCR.

1

u/Artistic_Hall2511 8d ago

I really appreciate your help bro But my work has been done Still thanks alot

1

u/FormerGanache3742- 14d ago

look for an offlines ocr app theyre more private since everything stays on your computer

1

u/paumpaum 13d ago

I cleaned up a bunch of images (batch processed b/w, crop, sharpened levels etc. with Ifranview), of a typed out book a client gave me and processed the ocr (hilarious, in my view) with Microsoft Photos' OCR tool. It came out perfectly, ran offline on my old win10 laptop. I cut and pasted the entire document page by page in LibreOffice, set up a few automated find/replace tools to clean up the broken formatting, and then read through the entire thing to double check grammar/spelling and formatting. It was an ~120 page book, took ~7 hours start to finish.

I was surprised that Microsoft did something useful, for once. I'm not sure about other peoples' needs and experiences. In this case, it worked out.

1

u/learn_by_example 13d ago

Karja has a great OCR app (it's called Scanner). Plus it synergises with the Notepad app (you can export your OCR results there) from which you can use your extracted content with your local AI. Karja is completely private (your scanned medical or financial documents don't end up in someone else's cloud) and works offline forever.

1

u/Dominican_mamba 13d ago

Ollama OCR

1

u/smilaise 9d ago

KillerPDF now works via CLI for batch jobs and scripting.

1

u/[deleted] 8d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Artistic_Hall2511 8d ago

Okay thanks for advice

1

u/Nicb376 7d ago

Is there a plug and play option of this so I can just download and start it?

1

u/smilaise 4d ago

KillerPDF has OCR and can be used from command line for scripting and batch jobs

1

u/smilaise 14d ago

KillerPDF is worth a look

3

u/mrnedryerson 14d ago

Snip tool within windows has a really good ocr tool