Image to text

Get the words out of a picture and onto your clipboard. Drop in a screenshot, a photo of a page, or a scan, and the text comes back selectable and copyable.

The common cases

A screenshot whose text you cannot select. A photo of a page in a book. An error message somebody sent as an image. A scanned form. A slide from a talk. Anything where the words exist but the format will not let you have them.

Getting a good read

Fill the frame with the text and keep it roughly straight — sideways is handled, since a hand-held camera is tilted more often than a scanner is, but a distant or motion-blurred shot loses characters. Even lighting beats bright lighting: a flash on glossy paper washes out whole lines.

Questions

Does it keep the layout?

Line breaks yes, columns and tables only roughly. For anything where the arrangement carries meaning, check the result against the picture.

What languages?

Whichever the configured reader supports — English and the major European languages reliably, with others available. The wrong language hint degrades accuracy quietly rather than failing, so it is worth setting.