OCR - Scan to Text



OCRIt can be very useful to scan not just photos but some of the documents handed down by the family, placing them into digital format. If they are handwritten papers then scan as if it was a photo to preserve it. Any transcribing would be by reading it and then typing it out into a document.

If the document is already in a typed mode, you can scan it and then using the free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool, make it so it can be edited, added to and combined with other documents. This online service is free, no registration necessary.

With each image scanned, keep it to no larger than 2 MG in size, about 5,000 pixels in width and length and keep to doing just 10 scans within an hour. The document scanned can be in JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF (only first page). You can also use a digital photo of the document you have taken if you don’t have a scanner. This program will also recognize numerous languages from Norwegian, Greek, Polish, Italian, and Turkish to name a few, 28 in total to date.

The biggest advantage to making these documents into editable text is combining documents. If you had a journal with many pages. If it was just a JPG image, you would have multiple number of images for the full journal. By converting it into digital text, that journal can become one document, page after page just like the original document, with one title. It is easier to share with family members.

Putting newspaper and magazine articles together on a specific family or individual as one document is another super idea. When you have multiple pages put together it becomes much easier when you later search for a key word. Overall, a good backup method also.

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