Character Recognition - convert a Jpeg into a text file via a webpage

August 7, 2014 7:42 AM

Can I upload a jpeg of a piece of text to a website and have it analyse it (using character recognition) and provide me with a text file. I don't want to install CR software onto my PC (as it's an infrequent task), I want to do it via a webpage. Thanks... Mark
posted by happy_sausage to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

I tried this site and it worked well. They only let you do 15 conversions per hour, but that should be fine for infrequent work.
posted by ubiquity at 7:52 AM on August 7, 2014 [3 favorites]

If you use Chrome check out a extension called project naptha it will do it automatically in your browser letting you copy/paste text in most any image you find on the web.
posted by Captain_Science at 8:07 AM on August 7, 2014

Google Drive can do this. It looks like the "new" Google Drive has fewer settings to control this, but if you select "Convert Documents" in your settings, that should do it.
posted by scruss at 9:35 AM on August 7, 2014

Google Drive and Evernote both do this. That requires you to have an account but it's free and web-based. A year ago Evernote seemed to do a better job but that may no longer be true.
posted by Tehhund at 10:58 AM on August 7, 2014

I strongly recommend that you use PNG rather than JPG. JPG creates artifacts, particularly in images which have sharp contrast edges (like text). It could cause problems for a text recognition engine. PNG won't do that; it's a lossless format.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:16 PM on August 7, 2014