Image to text windows

This article contains a list of Best Free Extract Text From Images Software for Windows. These are basically the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software which let you convert images to text which means that you can extract text from images using these. All of these software support common image file formats which include JPEG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, GIF, ICO, CUR, etc. In some of these, you can take screenshots and directly extract text from them. Some let you take pictures using camera and perform OCR. In addition, most of these supports PDF files too in order to extract text.

Some output settings can be customized in most of these extract text from images software. These include output format (Text, Doc, Searchable PDF), output folder, font customization, etc. Many of these support multiple OCR languages other than English, such as German, Spanish, Italian, French, Hindi, etc. Also, scan feature is provided in some of these to extract text from scanned paper documents.

My Favorite Extract Text From Images Software For Windows:

VietOCR is one of my favorite software to extract text from image files. It provides a Bulk OCR tool to extract text from multiple images at once. Capture2Text is another favorite of mine because you can extract text from images using a hotkey.

You may also like some best free Online OCR Services, Software To Extract Images From PDF, and Extract Images From Website for Windows.

VietOCR

VietOCR is a free, open source software to extract text from images. It supports BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and also PDF to perform OCR on. It provides a Bulk OCR tool to extract text from multiple images at once.

It provides two separate sections for input and output. Open an image in any of the supported formats. You can make adjustments to the opened image by using options like rotate, crop, filters, zoom in/out, etc. Now, click on Perform OCR button and it will display extracted text in the output section. It provides Spellcheck tool, font customization, etc. options too. You can save the final results in a text file.

Several configurations like OCR Engine Mode (Legacy Engine Only, LSTM Engine Only, etc.), watch folder, Page Segmentation Mode, etc. can be set up. Some additional tools including Merge TIFF, Split TIFF, Merge PDF, Split PDF, and Convert PDF to TIFF are available in it.

Capture2Text

Capture2Text is a different kind of OCR software in this list. It lets you extract text from images or other sources with a hotkey.

How to extract text from images using hotkey:

• First, launch this software and as you do that, it can be accessed from the system tray.
• Now, by default, the hotkey to capture text from the screen is “Windows key + Q”. You can customize it from its settings section.
• Open an image in a photo viewer and press the hotkey. As you do that, it lets you select the area on the image to perform OCR. After the selection of image area, it displays the extracted text in a popup window. From this window, you can customize the font and copy text to the clipboard.

By accessing its right-click menu from the system tray, you can customize various preferences. These include hotkeys for various functions like start OCR capture, re-capture last, text line capture, bubble capture, quick access language, etc. You can also select OCR language, capture box settings, translate options, etc.

gImageReader

gImageReader is another free software to extract text from images and PDFs. It lets you extract text from multiple images at once. I have explained a simplified procedure for you to perform OCR and extract text from one or more images.

How to extract text from multiple images using gImageReader

• Open one or more images from Files section. It supports a wide number of images to perform OCR on, such as JPG, JP2, TGA, BMP, WebP, TIFF, ICO, GIF, CUR, PNG, etc. You can rotate images or zoom in/out. Some image color control options like invert colors, brightness, contrast, resolution, etc. are provided in it.
• Now, select one or more added images and then select the OCR mode as Plain text or hOCR, PDF.
• At last, click on Recognize All button present on its toolbar and choose if you want to process only displayed image or all images at once. As you do that, an Output pane with text results will open up at the right. You can insert text to output, draw whitespace, find and replace text, etc. It lets you save output as a text file.

It supports multiple languages to perform OCR, such as Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. Overall, it is one of better OCR software to extract editable text from image files and PDF documents.

Photo Scan

Photo Scan is a Windows 10 app to extract text from images. It is a hassle-free and simple app which lets you extract text from stored pictures as well lets you click pictures with the camera to extract text. You can also take a screenshot and paste it directly into its interface to perform OCR. Some features of this “extract text from images” app:

• It lets you save the results in a text file or directly copy extracted text to the clipboard.
• It provides an inbuilt text to speech tool to listen to the extracted text.
• You can share extracted text via Mail, Skype, Twitter, OneNote, etc.

Note: It is an ad-supported app.

PDF OCR X

PDF OCR X is a simple extract text from images software for Windows. It can extract text from PDF documents as well. It can give output as editable text and searchable PDF document. Just open an image in any popular format like PNG, JPEG, BMP, GIF, etc., setup output parameters like output (plain text or searchable PDF), input quality, output folder, etc., and hit the Convert button. It will extract text and save the results to the output file. All input images in one session are displayed on the interface.

You can customize some program settings such as auto-detect orientation, wrap text, overwrite PDFs, etc. It provides an interesting Rate feature which lets you rate the conversion. You can submit your ratings with comments for a particular image to text conversion. Also, it supports multiple languages which can be installed as needed.

GT Text

GT Text is the next free extract text from images software in this list. Apart from saved images, it also lets you capture screen image to extract text. For saved images, it supports JPG, JPE, JFIF, TIFF, BMP, GIF, and PNG formats. It lets you enable OCR Text Area tool to perform OCR for a specific area on an image. It also lets you copy text from screen area. After extracting text from image, it displays results in a dialog box which can be copied to the clipboard. You can perform OCR again if the extracted text is not accurate.

If you wish to add more OCR languages other than English, you can install the language data from its interface.

Boxoft Free OCR Converter

Boxoft Free OCR Converter is a nice free extract text from images software for Windows. It is capable of extracting text from files of a wide number of image formats, such as JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, ICO, CUR, WMF, PSD, PCX, EMF, etc. It lets you add multiple images to its interface and extract text from multiple images at once. You can adjust the font size of extracted text and also save output as a text file. It supports multiple OCR languages which can be downloaded as needed, such as French, German, Dutch, Spanish, etc.

It provides a Scan tool to scan paper documents to extract text.

FreeOCR

FreeOCR is yet another software which can extract text from images. Just open an image and it will display contained text on its interface. You can copy extracted text to the clipboard or save it to a text file. It can extract text from PDF files too.

After opening an image, you can view its preview on the interface. You can crop the image, zoom in/out, rotate it, etc. and then save it as another JPEG image. It also provides some settings options like Change Font, Text Post Processing (Replace Strings, Separate Strings), OCR language, etc.

JPG to Word

JPG to Word is a free software which lets you extract text from JPEG images. The extracted text can be directly saved to a DOC file.

How to extract text from JPEG images:

• Open a JPEG image from your PC.
• From Options, select OCR to convert image into editable text.
• Specify the word document to save the extracted text.
• At last, hit the Convert button.

It also lets you insert images to a Word document.

Photo to Text OCR

Photo to Text OCR is another free app for Windows 10 to extract text from images. To do so, it supports some common image formats including JPEG, BMP, and PNG. It also lets you take pictures with a webcam to capture text from them. It displays editable text on the right side of its interface which can be copied to the clipboard. Also, you can share extracted text via different platforms including Twitter, Mail, Skype, etc.

Note: It is an ad-supported app.

With various tools available at your disposal, you no longer have to manually copy text from the images on your computer. You can use Windows 11’s built-in or free third-party tools to extract and copy text from pictures. I’ll show you how to use those tools.

One way to extract pieces of text from images on Windows 11 is by using the built-in Snipping Tool. This tool allows you to take screenshots on your Windows PC, but you can use it to copy text from images as well. The tool has a built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR) functionality.

To use the OCR feature in Snipping Tool, the app version must be 11.2308.33.0 or newer. You can check your current Snipping Tool version by opening the app, selecting the three dots in the top-right corner, choosing «Settings,» and scrolling down to view the current version.

If you’re using an older app version, update the app from Microsoft Store. Do that, by open Windows Search, type Microsoft Store, select the app in the search results, choose «Library» in the left sidebar, and then select «Update» next to Snipping Tool.

Open the image from which you want to copy text. Launch Snipping Tool, select «Snip» (the camera icon), and choose «New» to create a new screenshot.

Open the image from which you want to copy text. Use Snipping Tool’s screenshot feature to take a screenshot of your image. When you see the screenshot in Snipping Tool, at the bottom of the tool, click «Text Actions.»

To copy select text from the image, highlight the text on the image, right-click the text, and choose «Copy» or press Ctrl+C. To copy all the text from the image, at the top of the screenshot, click «Copy All Text.»

You can paste the copied text in any text editor on your PC. Simply access a text area, right-click there, and select «Paste» or press Ctrl+V. And that’s all.

With PowerToys

PowerToys is a tool that adds many additional features to your Windows 11 PC. One of these features is the ability to extract text from any part of your screen, including images and videos. The text is then copied to your clipboard.

You can install PowerToys from GitHub if you’d like, or use Microsoft Store to get the app as follows.

Start by opening Windows Search, then typie Microsoft Store, and launch the Microsoft Store app. Select the search box at the top, type PowerToys, and press Enter. Choose «Microsoft PowerToys» in the search results and select «Install.» Wait while Microsoft Store installs PowerToys on your PC. When that’s done, launch the tool.

On the PowerToys main interface, in the left sidebar, scroll down and click «Text Extractor.» This is the feature you’ll use to extract text from images. On the right pane, click «Open Settings.» In the newly opened window, turn on the «Enable Text Extractor» toggle.

You’ve successfully enabled the feature. To use it, open the image from which you want to copy the text. On your keyboard, press the Windows+Shift+T key combination. Select the area on the image from where you want to copy text. Text Extractor will identify the text in the selected image area and copy the text from there to your clipboard.

You can paste the copied text in any text editor using the «Paste» option or by pressing Ctrl+V.

PowerToys allows you to change the keyboard shortcut for extracting text from images. To do that, open PowerToys, select «Text Extractor,» choose «Open Settings,» select «Activation Shortcut,» and choose the new key combination.

You can extract text from pretty much anything that’s displayed on your screen, including videos, websites, and so on.

With OneNote

If you’ve installed Microsoft OneNote on your PC, you can use this note-taking app’s built-in OCR feature to copy text from images. Note that OneNote only allows you to copy all the text from an image; you can’t selectively copy text.

To use it, launch Windows Search, type OneNote, and select the app in the search results. When the app opens, start a new note where you’ll add the image. Then, add the image by choosing Insert > Pictures > From File. Navigate to the folder where you’ve saved the image and select it.