Best Practices In OCR: Tips for Accurate Image to Text Conversion

OCR or Optical Character Recognition is technology that enables computers to look at images and recognize text in them. This is an advanced technique of image processing where the computers learn to recognize shapes. All of this is an application of Artificial Intelligence. 

Nowadays, the use of OCR is quite common. It is used in some of our everyday apps like Google Lens. People use it for extracting text from images. OCR-powered image-to-text converters are available online and used by students and professionals to convert images of physical files into digital files. 

Today we will look at tips and best practices you need to apply when using these tools. Applying them will help you to use these tools more efficiently and have fewer erroneous outcomes.

Best Practices for Using OCR Tools

Here are some tips for making the most out of an image to text converter. You may need to do a bit of ultimately bell be ultimately worth it.

1. Use High-Quality Images 

The result of an image to text conversion is quite dependent on the quality of the image. The sharper and clearer the image is the better the text extraction will be. Sharpness and clarity are controlled by resolution. So, try and use high-resolution images.

Aside from that, sharpness and clarity are controlled by focus. When you take a picture with a camera, not focusing the lens will result in a blurry image. If you try and extract text from a blurry image, the result will be highly inaccurate.

To get high-quality images of documents I suggest using a scanner. Scanners do not have issues with focus and resolution. The image from a scanner is the best if you want to extract text from it. 

2. Do A Bit Of Preprocessing

Preprocessing refers to the act of cleaning the image before using an image-to-text converter. It entails the following things:

• Removing noise and clutter from the image.
• Make the image black and white so the text stands out against the background.
• Make sure that the text and image are not tilted or at an angle i.e., deskewing.

These are all things that need to be taken care of before the text extraction can happen. Some advanced OCR tools can do all of this, but you cannot expect them to be 100% accurate. So, to avoid the confusion, just do this yourself. 

Here’s how you can do it.

• When taking the image, remove any artifacts such as dust, paper clips, and any other small particles that could result in noise. 
• Edit the image to be black and white or scan it in that mode to begin with.
• When scanning the image or taking the picture make sure that your document is not tilted, or otherwise skewed.

Doing these things will help the image-to-text converter do its job more effectively.

3. Use A Reputable Image-To-Text Converter

When it comes to image-to-text converters, there is a lot of choice available. You can find dozens of image-to-text converters online. Now, it is obvious that not all of them are that great. Most of them have their perks and drawbacks. So, you want to consider these things before sticking with one tool.

The first important thing you should look out for is whether the tool can even recognize the language of the text you want to extract. Most tools will have a language option so you can check that real quick to see whether your language is supported or not.

The other thing you want to look out for is how the output is provided. Some tools will give you the option to see the result on their UI and/or download it afterward. Some tools though just give you the download option without even letting you see the result.

The point is to look for features that will help you rather than annoy you. 

4. Proofread The Output

Finally, always read the output. OCR is highly advanced and excellent. But it is not infallible. It can make mistakes. Even if you do all of the preprocessing, the tool might make an error and recognize some characters incorrectly. 

So, always proofread the output and check whether the image-to-text converter made any mistakes or not. At most, you should find some typos, but sometimes, OCR tools gloss over an entire sentence or section. If that happens then that means, there is a problem with the image. 

After you deal with whatever issues that pop up, you are good to go.

Conclusion

Those are some best practices that you should apply whenever you use an OCR image-to-text converter. These best practices vastly reduce the rate of error and increase the accuracy of these tools. As long as you do that, you will be golden.