How to Extract Text from an Image with OCR

Have you ever needed the text trapped inside a screenshot, a photo of a document, or a scanned page? Retyping it by hand is slow and error-prone. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) reads the characters in an image and turns them into text you can copy, edit, and search — in seconds.

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. It analyses the shapes in an image and matches them to letters and numbers, producing editable text. Modern OCR handles printed documents, receipts, slides, book pages, and even many photos taken with a phone, across multiple languages.

How to extract text from an image

1. Open the Image to Text (OCR) tool.
2. Upload or drag in your image or screenshot.
3. Choose the language of the text for better accuracy.
4. Run the tool and copy the recognized text.

Everything runs in your browser, so the image you process is not sent to a server — useful when the document contains private or sensitive information.

Tips for accurate results

Use a sharp, well-lit image. Straight, high-contrast text on a plain background gives the best accuracy. Crop out clutter so the tool focuses on the words. If the text is skewed, straightening the photo first helps. For handwriting, results vary — printed text is far more reliable.

Common uses

Copy a quote from a screenshot, digitize a printed receipt for your records, pull text from a slide, or turn a scanned page into an editable document. If your source is a scanned PDF rather than an image, use our OCR PDF tool to make the whole document searchable instead.

Frequently asked questions

Is it free? Yes, the tool is free with no account.

Is my image private? Yes. Processing happens in your browser, so the image stays on your device.

Which languages are supported? Several common languages; pick the right one for best accuracy.

Does it read handwriting? It can attempt it, but printed text is far more accurate.

See more tools on our free image tools page.

Tamer Baghdadi

CEO / Co-Founder