Application to Convert a Picture of Text to Text

[Tyre]

I am on vacation and my future roommate received a lease that I also need to return to the landlord. He said it would be no problem to get it to me, and now I have 6 jpeg files...

I have to send these to a bank first so I need an application that can take the text out of pictures. That's it.

Thanks for all the help!

 

[Emulsion]

Hey Tyre,

If I'm not mistaken I believe evernote will be a solution to you. I'm just getting into the app so I'm not sure what else it can do to help you out, but check it out.

Mac App store link:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/evernote/id406056744?mt=12

 

[taptapdev]

You can also try a search for OCR in the new Mac App Store.

 

[mchalebk]

OCR (optical character recognition) is generally what you would use to convert text in a graphic (such as a scanned document) into editable text. However, for something like a lease, I wouldn't recommend using it. OCR is never perfect and you don't want to change the terms of your lease because the OCR app misread a character.

Can you explain why you want to convert the text? If we had a better idea of exactly what you are trying to do, we might be able to give you better suggestions.

 

[roadbloc]

Searching OCR in the Mac App store provides you with many.

 

[Tyre]

OCR (optical character recognition) is generally what you would use to convert text in a graphic (such as a scanned document) into editable text. However, for something like a lease, I wouldn't recommend using it. OCR is never perfect and you don't want to change the terms of your lease because the OCR app misread a character.

Can you explain why you want to convert the text? If we had a better idea of exactly what you are trying to do, we might be able to give you better suggestions.

I need to send this lease to a man at my bank via email, but my friend emailed me (not PDFs, not .doc) jpegs of the lease. He took six pictures of it, one for each page.

I think this OCR sounds like a good idea, since it is only 6 typed pages I can review it for mistakes and the banker will as well before sending it.

Thanks to all for the help!

 

[Tyre]

I downloaded OCR Tools off of the Mac App Store (only $4.99 thank God) and it worked surprisingly well. Only a few slip ups (reading w as vv or a capital M a IVI) but I was rather impressed.

Thanks again for all the help and fingers crossed for Verizon iPhone!

 

[Gregg2]

I think this OCR sounds like a good idea, since it is only 6 typed pages I can review it for mistakes and the banker will as well before sending it.

Yes. The OCR software I've used is not perfect. Some things "translate" well, others don't. For example, "rn" might come out as "m".

 

[mchalebk]

I need to send this lease to a man at my bank via email, but my friend emailed me (not PDFs, not .doc) jpegs of the lease. He took six pictures of it, one for each page.

I think this OCR sounds like a good idea, since it is only 6 typed pages I can review it for mistakes and the banker will as well before sending it.

For legal papers such as a lease, I would still recommend against using OCR software to convert the files. It is not hard at all to convert 6 jpegs into one pdf file. By turing the lease jpegs into an editable file (such as .doc), you might run the risk of making it invalid.

 

[Gregg2]

Good point. The whole idea of a file that cannot be modified has now been subverted by the advent of OCR software. What's next? ...lockable pdf? Then someone will invent PDF Unlock.