Highlighting text from images...

[soco]

For the life of me, I can't figure this out.

I have this task I do at work every week. It involves taking a printed list I recieve by mail and highlighting certain lines of text in it for reference.

Trouble is, I have to do this for 12 double-sided pages. It's horrifying.

There's got to be an easy way to scan these pages to my computer and do this, right? I need to be able to do it with multiple colored highlights.

 

[SplicedBanjo]

Are you saying you want your computer to sort out what is text and what is image, and recognize the text? Most OCR programs can attempt to do this, but you probably won't get 100% accuracy, especially if the fonts are highly stylized.

 

[soco]

Are you saying you want your computer to sort out what is text and what is image, and recognize the text? Most OCR programs can attempt to do this, but you probably won't get 100% accuracy, especially if the fonts are highly stylized.

Yes, and the text is super plain. Not stylized at all. It's literally a giant list of names and dates.

I'm going to Google OCR programs.

 

[GGJstudios]

Yes, and the text is super plain. Not stylized at all. It's literally a giant list of names and dates.

I'm going to Google OCR programs.

Do you need to be able to search the text or modify it? Or are you only drawing circles or boxes around parts of the text? If the latter, you can scan the document as an image and annotate it with circles, boxes, arrows and notes using Preview. There is no need to OCR the document unless you need to search, modify or copy text within the document.

 

[soco]

Do you need to be able to search the text or modify it? Or are you only drawing circles or boxes around parts of the text? If the latter, you can scan the document as an image and annotate it with circles, boxes, arrows and notes using Preview. There is no need to OCR the document unless you need to search, modify or copy text within the document.

I just need to highlight parts with different colored highlights. I don't need to modify the text at all.

In Preview, or anything else for that matter, can I highlight with "see-thru" color as if it were highlighted with an old fashioned highlighter?

Basically this, using a computer.

 

[GGJstudios]

I just need to highlight parts with different colored highlights. I don't need to modify the text at all.

In Preview, or anything else for that matter, can I highlight with "see-thru" color as if it were highlighted with an old fashioned highlighter?

Basically this, using a computer.

Image

No, not highlighting with Preview, but I'm sure you can use other apps to easily do that. With Preview you can do this:

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[soco]

No, not highlighting with Preview, but I'm sure you can use other apps to easily do that. With Preview you can do this:

View attachment 317628
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See, I need to find those other apps. Maybe I'll play with Photoshop more when I get home.

 

[GGJstudios]

See, I need to find those other apps. Maybe I'll play with Photoshop more when I get home.

I'm sure you can do that easily with Photoshop. It would be easier than messing with OCR technology, which still has a long way to go before it's reliable.

 

[soco]

I'm sure you can do that easily with Photoshop. It would be easier than messing with OCR technology, which still has a long way to go before it's reliable.

Noted. Thanks for the help GGJ!