The OCR technology became more and more popular in the last couple of years, and there are multitudes OCR programs available on the internet that can help you to convert any scanned document or image into editable text. If you search the web, you will notice there are multiple iPhone and Android OCR apps, both free and paid, but the key is to choose the best ones, which will offer you high quality results. In this article, I will introduce you the top mobile OCR apps for iPhone and Android devices. For desktop users, PDFelement Pro also provide OCR feature.
You know that Google dominates the entire Android market, and things do not change when it comes to OCR apps. Google Docs has a nice OCR feature that works great, as surprising as it sounds. It is developed exclusively for Android, but it does a good job when it comes to converting PDF scanned documents or images to editable text. On the other hand, there are no other features or options, but the tool is for free!
Another Google app that can help you to convert scanned PDF files or images into editable text is Google Goggles. The best part of it is that you can simply paste the text after anywhere into your smartphone, including an SMS, a note, or maybe Gmail? You can also use it to scan business cards and to save the details into your contacts section, all in one click. How cool is that? Last, but not least, you can use it to translate the text in a multitude of languages.
This experimental app is based on Tesseract, and is totally free to use. They do not have a great accuracy, but we liked that it works almost similar to Goggles, but they have an extra cool feature: you can continuous preview in real time the way the app recognizes the text from the PDF document or image.
Features |
Google Docs |
Google Goggles |
OCR Test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free | Free |
| Type | Personal, Professional | Personal | Personal |
| Functions | OCR Converter | OCR Scanner and Converter | OCR Converter |
| Features |
Easy to use Accessible Fast Pretty accurate Unlimited conversion Multiple languages |
Scan texts Recognizes books, paintings, etc. Translates by taking picture of a text Reads in 8 languages |
Live conversion Continuous preview Copy and paste the text |
This app allows you to extract any editable text from images, but also to share it using your Email or Evernote. You simply need to take a picture of a printed page with the camera of your iPhone, and the program will convert it automatically into text. It works perfectly for English texts.
Unfortunately, Perfect OCR is not a free app, but it is great because it can convert any image into editable text "on the go". You can use it even to store the history of the generated text, to crop, rotate, or adjust colors of a taken image. Furthermore, the OCR function is a little slow, as it needs three captured images of a text to analyze and convert it.
Prizmo is a famous and sophisticated OCR iPhone app, with an easy-to-use interface. Friendly, but professional, if offers a lot of flexibility for users who want to change or work with the text as they wish. A cool feature of Prizmo is that you can share the resulted text through Dropbox, Evernote, and other platforms.
PDFelement Pro is the best PDF OCR tool with multiple OCR languages. It allows you to edit and convert scanned PDF files with ease.
Why Choose This PDF Editor:
Features |
Image to Text OCR |
Perfect OCR |
Prizmo |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $3.99 | $9.99 |
| Type | Personal | Personal, Professional | Personal, Professional |
| Functions | Image Scanner and Converter | Scanner, Converter, Editor | Image Converter |
| Features |
Share the results Email features Great for English texts |
Keeps history "On the go" conversion Edit images before conversion |
Options for image adjustment Extracts text from images |
Ivan Cook
chief Editor