OCR 或光学字符识别(Optical Character Recognition )是一种复杂的软件技术，允许计算机从图像中提取文本。在早期，OCR软件非常粗糙且不可靠。现在，有了海量的计算能力，它通常是将图像中的文本转换为可以使用文字处理器编辑的内容的最快方法。
这十个应用程序提供了不同的OCR任务，没有价格标签并且跨多个平台。如果您一直在寻找将图片转化为文字的方法，那么您几乎可以肯定会在下面找到您需要的最佳免费 ocr 软件。
FreeOCR是一个基本的免费OCR软件，它提供了您想要从此类软件中获得的所有核心功能。对于初学者，如果你有一个TWAIN扫描仪（基本上是所有这些），你可以直接扫描并从纸上提取文本。图像导入也可以按照您的预期工作。这也包括TIFF 和 PDF(TIFF and PDF)格式的 多页文档。
FreeOCR 使用了最初由惠普(Hewlett Packard)开发并最终由谷歌(Google)发布供大家使用的开源引擎。(Open Source)它被称为“ Tesseract ”。Tesseract有一些简洁的功能，但最有趣的功能之一是它的自动布局检测系统。这意味着您无需花时间在离散的文本块周围繁琐地绘制矩形。
SimpleOCR是一个基本的OCR包，可以直接从您的扫描仪将键入的文档转换为文本。在这种情况下，名称SimpleOCR是相当直白的。如果您的文档表现出任何形式的复杂性，例如列或没有完美清晰的扫描，SimpleOCR无法完成工作。
当然，Simple Software很乐意以几美元的价格向您出售更复杂的解决方案，但如果您只想对一些标准文本块进行 OCR，这是一个不会花费您一分钱且使用简单的选项顾名思义。作为奖励，它支持手写识别！
简易屏幕 OCR(Easy Screen OCR)(Easy Screen OCR)（Windows、Mac、iOS 和 Android）( (Windows, Mac, iOS & Android))
Easy Screen OCR是一款小型、最好的免费OCR软件，它依赖于基于云的、由 Google 提供支持的识别引擎。正如您所料，这意味着您需要有一个有效的互联网连接才能使软件正常工作。如果这不是问题，您会在这里找到一个非常有用的工具。
此OCR应用程序旨在从屏幕截图中提取文本，让您从网站或屏幕上的任何其他文本中复制文本。对此特别酷的是对 100 多种语言的支持。如果您想翻译（例如）日文文本，您只需截取屏幕截图并让Easy Screen OCR完成。如果这是您经常需要做的事情，那么您可以选择设置自定义热键也很有帮助。
虽然这不是传统的OCR应用程序，但现在有很多工作流程涉及从您正在使用的图像中提取文本。Easy Screen OCR使该任务像几个按键一样简单。
不幸的是，该软件的最新版本（1.4.2 及更高版本）在使用 20 次后需要支付订阅费。但是，该软件的旧版本仍然可以免费使用。
Capture2Text是一个有趣的小应用程序，具有狭窄但非常有用的功能。它用于从当前屏幕上的内容中对文本进行OCR 。您按下热键，选择您想要进行OCR的屏幕区域，然后将结果直接发送到剪贴板，这样您就可以将其粘贴到文字处理器中。
Capture2Text是一个可移植的应用程序，因此您无需安装它。只需(Just)运行可执行文件，您就可以在版本 7 及更高版本的任何Windows系统上使用它。(Windows)该软件也是开源(Source)的，因此您可以随意复制和修改它，只要您遵守GNU许可证的条款。
这绝不是花哨的，但是如果您想从正在处理的图像中快速获取文本，这是一款很棒的软件。
A9t9 (Windows 10)
如果您从未涉足Windows 应用商店(Windows Store)，您可能会惊讶地发现那里实际上有大量免费的开源(Open Source)应用程序。a9t9 应用程序就是这样一个宝石，根本没有附加任何条件。没有广告，它承诺非常强大的OCR性能。
A9t9支持相当长的语言列表，尽管不如此列表中的其他一些选项那么广泛。如果您是Windows 8.1（或更高版本）用户，现在需要OCR并且不想花钱，只需单击Windows Store应用程序上的一个按钮，几秒钟后 a9t9 就会将您的图像处理成文档可以编辑。
Adobe在野外拥有大量的移动应用程序。有些非常棒，而许多似乎只是实验。Adobe Scan属于前一类。这是一款出色的相机扫描和OCR应用程序，可在Android或 iOS 上运行。无需付费，您也无需订阅任何Adobe服务。
当然，最终文档是PDF，您只能使用付费版本的Acrobat直接对其进行编辑，但如果我们诚实的话，将文本复制到您选择的文字处理器中并不麻烦。
Adobe OCR软件的最佳功能之一是它能够识别笔迹。当然，质量好的笔迹会得到更好的识别。不要指望它能破译你自己看不懂的东西。就像你医生的处方单一样。
试用Adobe Scan还有其他几个原因。从名片自动扫描、OCR和联系人的功能非常酷。(OCR)事实上，如果你花很多时间与人会面，它可以为你节省大量时间。
正如您对PhotoShop的创建者所期望的那样，该应用程序还具有一小组修饰工具。因此，您可以在尝试从中提取文本之前清理图像。
办公镜头（(Office Lens ()Android和( & )iOS）
当第一批带有内置数码相机的手机上市时，所提供的质量真的很糟糕。生成的图像对任何事情都没有真正的用处，而且您当然无法分辨出诸如文本之类的精细细节。
今天，即使是廉价机型上的精密相机也能提供高分辨率图像，足以替代文档扫描仪。例如，Google Drive应用程序可以让您只使用手机摄像头进行一些非常好的扫描。
Microsoft的Office Lens应用程序不仅可以让您扫描文档，还可以让您即时对它们进行 OCR。因此，您可以拍下某人的名片并立即准备好将文本复制到您的联系人列表中。
Office Lens是一个独立的应用程序，但它的功能也被内置到其他MS Office应用程序中，因此如果您已经在使用这些应用程序，则可能没有必要下载这个独立的应用程序。话又说回来，有时一个专注的、轻量级的应用程序正是医生所要求的。
English OCR是一款适用于 iPhone 和 iPad 的免费OCR应用程序，可以非常轻松地快速拍摄文档并将照片中的文本转换为数字格式。它是在开源(Open Source)许可证下发布的，但开发人员使用广告来帮助承担开发和支持应用程序的成本。
有一个付费的“ Pro ”版本，它的功能与免费版完全相同。唯一的区别是专业(Pro)版删除了所有广告。因此，如果您对一些广告没问题，您根本不需要投入任何资金。
字里行间阅读(Reading Between The Lines)
迄今为止，无纸化世界的承诺未能实现。这(Which)意味着OCR技术仍将是数字世界和模拟世界之间桥梁的重要组成部分。
有了上面的OCR应用程序，您再也不必费力地重新输入文档，最重要的是，它们不会花费您一分钱。
8 Best Free OCR Software Apps to Convert Images to Text
OCR or Optical Character Recognition is a sophisticated software technique that allows a computer to extract text from images. In the early days OCR software was pretty rough and unreliable. Now, with the tons of computing power on tap, it’s often the fastest way to convert text in an image into something you can edit with a word processor.
These ten applications offer different takes on the task of OCR, without a price tag and across multiple platforms. If you’ve been looking for a way to turn pictures into words, you’ll almost certainly find the best free ocr software you need below.
FreeOCR is a basic free OCR software that offers all the core functionality you’d want from this type of software. For starters, if you have a TWAIN scanner (which is basically all of them) you can directly scan and extract text from paper. Image imports work as you’d expect as well. This includes multi-page documents in TIFF and PDF format as well.
FreeOCR uses an Open Source engine originally developed by Hewlett Packard and eventually released by Google for everyone to use. It’s known as “Tesseract”. Tesseract has some neat features, but one of the most interesting is its automatic layout detection system. This means you don’t need to spend time tediously drawing rectangles around discrete blocks of text.
SimpleOCR is a basic OCR package that can convert typed documents into text, directly from your scanner. The name, SimpleOCR, is quite literal in this case. If you have documents that exhibit any form of complexity, such as columns or that don’t have perfectly crisp scans, SimpleOCR can’t get the job done.
Of course, Simple Software is happy to sell you a more sophisticated solution for a few bucks, but if you just want to OCR some standard blocks of text, this is one option that won’t cost you a penny and is as simple to use as the name suggests. As a bonus, it supports handwriting recognition!
Easy Screen OCR is a small, best free OCR software that relies on a cloud-based, Google-powered recognition engine. As you might expect, this means that you need to have an active internet connection for the software to work. If that’s not an issue, you’ll find quite a useful tool here.
This OCR application is intended to extract text from screenshots, letting you copy text from websites or any other text that’s on-screen. What’s particularly cool about this is the support for more than 100 languages. If you want to translate (for example) Japanese text, you can simply take a screenshot and have Easy Screen OCR do it for. If this is something you need to do often, it also helps that you have the option to set custom hotkeys.
While this is not a traditional OCR application, there are plenty of workflows around these days that involve extracting text from the images you’re working with. Easy Screen OCR makes that task as easy as a few keystrokes.
Unfortunately the latest version of the software (1.4.2 and up) requires a subscription fee after 20 uses. However, older versions of the software are still free to use.
Capture2Text is an interesting little application with a narrow, but very useful function. It’s used to OCR text from what’s currently on your screen. You press a hotkey, select the zone of the screen you want to OCR and then it sends the result directly to the clipboard, so you can paste it into a word processor.
Capture2Text is a portable application, so you don’t need to install it. Just run the executable and you can use it on any Windows system from version 7 and up. The software is Open Source as well, so you can copy and modify it as you like, as long as you comply with the terms of the GNU license.
It’s not fancy by any means, but if you want to rapidly grab text from images that you are handling, this is a great piece of software to do it.
A9t9 (Windows 10)
If you’ve never ventured onto the Windows Store, you may be surprised to find that there are actually plenty of free and Open Source applications there. The a9t9 app is just such a gem and comes with no strings attached at all. There are no adverts and it promises pretty robust OCR performance.
A9t9 supports quite a long list of languages, although not as extensive as some of the other options on this list. If you’re a Windows 8.1 (or up) user who needs OCR right now and don’t want to spend any money, then simply click a single button on the Windows Store app and seconds later a9t9 will be processing your images into documents you can edit.
Adobe has an absolute ton of mobile apps out in the wild. Some are pretty great, while many seem to be little more than experiments. Adobe Scan falls into the former category. It’s a polished camera scanning and OCR application that will run on either Android or iOS. There’s no charge and you don’t need to be subscribed to any Adobe services.
Of course, the final document is a PDF, which you can only directly edit with a paid version of Acrobat, but copying the text over to a word processor of your choice is no hassle, if we’re being honest.
One of the best features of the Adobe OCR software is its ability to recognize handwriting. Of course, good quality handwriting will be better recognized. Don’t expect it to decipher something you can’t read yourself. Like your doctor’s prescription notes.
There are a few other reasons to try out Adobe Scan. The ability to automatically scan, OCR and contacts from a business card is very cool. In fact, if you spend a lot of time meeting people, it could save you a heck of a lot of time.
The app also has, as you’d expect from the creators of PhotoShop, a small set of touch-up tools. So you can clean up the images before trying to extract text from them.
When the first phones with built-in digital cameras came to market the quality on offer was truly awful. The resulting images weren’t really useful for anything and you certainly couldn’t make out fine detail such as text.
Today, the sophisticated cameras found on even budget models offer high-resolution images that are good enough to use as a replacement for a document scanner. For example, the Google Drive app lets you make some pretty good scans using nothing but your phone camera.
The Office Lens app by Microsoft not only lets you scan documents, it allows you to OCR them on the fly. So you could take a snap of someone’s business card and immediately have the text ready to copy into your contacts list.
Office Lens is a standalone application, but its functionality is being built into other MS Office apps as well, so if you’re already using those it may not be necessary to download this independent app. Then again, sometimes a focused, lightweight app is exactly what the doctor ordered.
English OCR is a free OCR app for iPhone and iPad that makes it pretty easy to quickly take a snap of a document and convert the text in the photo into a digital format. It’s released under an Open Source licence, but the developers use adverts to help carry the costs of developing and supporting the application.
There is a paid “Pro” version that has exactly the same functionality as the free edition. The only difference is that the Pro version removes all adverts. So if you are OK with a few ads, you don’t need to put any money down at all.
Reading Between The Lines
The promise of a paperless world has, so far, failed to materialize. Which means OCR technology will remain an important part of the bridge between the digital and analogue worlds.
Armed with the OCR apps above, you should never have to laboriously retype a document ever again and, best of all, they won’t cost you a cent.
