Image to Text Converter (OCR)
Pull the text out of a photo or screenshot — free, private, editable.
Also known as: OCR tool, picture to text converter, photo text extractor, JPG to text
How it works
- 1Click or drag to upload one or more photos, screenshots, or scanned pages (JPG, PNG, WEBP, or BMP).
- 2Pick the language the text is written in.
- 3Click "Extract text" — each image is processed on your device, one at a time.
- 4Review the result: words the engine flagged as uncertain are listed separately so you can quickly check them against the original image.
- 5Edit the text directly if needed, then copy it, or download it as .txt, a searchable PDF, or a .zip of the whole batch.
Why use Image to Text Converter (OCR)
Batch processing
Upload multiple images at once — each is read and returned as its own editable result, with a one-click combined download.
Flagged, not hidden, mistakes
Words the engine wasn't confident about are called out separately, so you know exactly where to double-check instead of hunting through the full text.
Fully editable output
The extracted text lands in an editable box, not a locked result — fix anything before you copy or download it.
Searchable PDF export
Download a real searchable PDF with the recognized text layered invisibly over your original image, not just a plain .txt file.
20 languages
Recognizes English, Spanish, French, German, Hindi, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and more.
Nothing uploaded
Every image is read on your device. Only a generic OCR language file is fetched — never your photo.
Who uses Image to Text Converter (OCR)
Digitizing a receipt
Photograph a paper receipt and pull the text out for expense tracking, instead of retyping it by hand.
Copying text from a screenshot
Grab the text out of a screenshot — a tweet, a code snippet, an error message — without retyping it.
Reading a page from a book
Photograph a page you want to quote or study and get back text you can search and copy.
Extracting a quote from an image
Pull text out of a meme, a slide, or a graphic that has no selectable text of its own.
Batch-digitizing paperwork
Photograph a stack of forms or notes and process them together instead of one at a time.
Making a scanned page searchable
Export a searchable PDF from a scanned page so you can find text in it later with Ctrl+F.
About Image to Text Converter (OCR)
OCR — optical character recognition — is the technology that turns the pixels of a photographed or scanned page into actual, selectable, editable text. It's what lets you take a picture of a receipt, a page from a book, or a screenshot full of text and get back words you can search, copy, and paste, instead of a flat image you can only look at.
This tool runs Tesseract.js, a browser-based build of the open-source Tesseract OCR engine, entirely on your device. Your image is decoded and read locally — it's never sent to a server, uploaded anywhere, or stored. The only network activity involved is a one-time download of the language data file for whichever language you pick (a few megabytes, cached by your browser after the first use), the same way a font or a webpage's other assets get cached.
Being upfront about accuracy: no OCR engine, free or paid, reads every word correctly on every image. Printed text — books, documents, clean screenshots — comes back very accurate. Messy handwriting, blurry photos, low light, or heavy stylized fonts will produce more mistakes, the same way it would with any OCR tool anywhere. That's why every result here is shown as an editable text box, not a locked-in output, and why words the engine had low confidence in are flagged with a quick expandable list so you know exactly what to double-check against the original image instead of having to reread the whole thing line by line.
It supports batch processing — upload several images at once, and each one is processed and returned as its own editable result, with a combined download available for the whole batch. It also supports 20 languages, and can generate a real searchable PDF for each image (text laid invisibly over the original picture), not just a plain text dump.
Image to Text Converter (OCR) vs. other options
How Open Tools Library compares to desktop software and other online tools.
| Feature | Open Tools Library | Desktop software | Other online tools |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, unlimited | Often paid or subscription | Often free with daily limits |
| File privacy | Never leaves your device | Stays local | Uploaded to a server |
| Batch upload | Yes, unlimited | Varies by app | Often limited or paywalled |
| Uncertain-word flagging | Built in | Rarely shown | Rarely shown |
| Searchable PDF export | Included, free | Often a paid feature | Often a paid feature |
| Watermarks | Never | Never | Sometimes on free tiers |
Pro tips
- A clear, straight, well-lit photo converts far more accurately than a blurry, angled, or dim one.
- This tool is built for printed and typed text — books, receipts, screenshots, signs. It is not built for handwriting.
- Set the language to match the text before processing — running English text through a different language model hurts accuracy.
- Check the flagged-words list on any result before relying on it — that's exactly what it's there for.
- High-resolution images generally read better than heavily compressed or low-resolution ones.
- The first time you use a language, your browser downloads that language's data file — after that it's cached for future use.
Technical specs
- Supported input
- .jpg, .png, .webp, .bmp
- Output formats
- .txt, searchable .pdf, .zip (batch)
- Languages
- 20 supported
- Batch upload
- Supported, unlimited images
- Best suited for
- Printed and typed text, not handwriting
- Processing location
- 100% local, in your browser
Privacy & security
A photo of a receipt, a document, or a private note carries more information than the text alone — it shouldn't have to leave your device just to get read.
OCR runs locally using Tesseract.js — your image is decoded and read entirely in your browser tab.
No account is created and nothing is emailed anywhere just to extract text.
Once you close the tab, nothing about your image or its text remains on any server.
Handles a photographed ID or medical form as carefully as it handles a screenshot of a recipe.
Frequently asked questions
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. The image is decoded and read entirely in your browser. The only network request involved is a one-time download of the OCR language data file, which contains no information about your image.
Is the extracted text 100% accurate?
No OCR tool — free or paid — is 100% accurate on every image. Printed text comes back very accurate; handwriting, blurry photos, and stylized fonts produce more mistakes. Every result is fully editable, and words the engine is unsure about are flagged for a quick check.
Can it read handwriting?
It's built and tuned for printed and typed text — books, receipts, screenshots, signs. Handwriting recognition is a different problem that general OCR engines, including this one, don't handle well.
Can I process multiple images at once?
Yes. Upload as many images as you like in one go — each is processed and returned as its own editable result, with a combined download available for the whole batch.
What languages are supported?
20 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Turkish, and Polish.
What's a searchable PDF, and why would I want one?
It's a PDF that looks exactly like your original image, but has the recognized text placed invisibly on top of it — so you can search, select, and copy text from it in any PDF viewer, while it still looks like the original scan.
Troubleshooting
The extracted text is mostly wrong or empty
This usually means the image is blurry, poorly lit, heavily angled, or very low resolution. Try a clearer, straighter, better-lit photo — OCR accuracy depends heavily on image quality regardless of which tool you use.
A lot of words are flagged as uncertain
This is normal for handwriting, stylized fonts, low-resolution images, or text at an angle. Use the flagged-word list to quickly check just those words against your original image rather than rereading everything.
Handwriting didn't come out right
This tool is built for printed and typed text, not handwriting. Handwriting recognition is a fundamentally different and much harder problem that no general OCR engine handles well.
Processing is slow on a batch of images
OCR runs entirely on your device, one image at a time — a large batch or a large device workload will take noticeably longer, especially on older hardware.
The wrong language was detected
This tool doesn't auto-detect language — make sure you've selected the correct language from the dropdown before processing, since running text through the wrong language model significantly hurts accuracy.
Related searches
Landed here looking for something worded a little differently? Image to Text Converter (OCR) covers all of these too:
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