The technology that enables computers to recognize text–Optical Character Recognition—is constantly evolving, expanding the parameters of what we can convert. It now boasts the ability to convert even handwritten text. This is an impressive feat—human handwriting is, of course, the most random and changeable of fonts. Not only does it differ from person to person, but the handwriting of one individual will not be identical each time they write. That’s a lot of variations for a computer to attempt to detect!
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Any kind of raster text is tricky to convert, but handwritten characters take things to a whole new level of complexity. In contrast to established fonts, the latter rarely contain regular or predictable patterns—which is basically what computers are searching for when you instruct them to find text within an image. This means that, if you’re looking to convert handwritten text, you need to use very sophisticated technology. Achieving the desired results depends both on selecting the right software and ensuring your original image is optimized for conversion.
This article lays out the extent to which it is realistically possible to convert handwritten text using OCR. We explore the potential and limits of current technology, and provide advice on how to get the most out of your handwritten work in a CAD context.
The results of using OCR on handwritten text in Scan2CAD
Table of Contents
What is OCR?
Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, is the technology that allows software to recognize text within an image. It thus performs a vital stage in the process of converting raster text to vector text. In fact, OCR’s ability to extract text from graphics or documents makes it an incredibly useful tool across a wide range of industries. Consider security cameras that can pick up car number plates, or digital architectural blueprints containing editable annotations—neither would be possible without OCR.
It comes in particularly handy in the world of CAD. Anyone who’s attempted to manually trace an image with text in order to convert it to a vector format knows that getting a computer to do the job is much easier! Until fairly recently, though, automatic tracing was not recommended if the image to be converted included handwritten text. A computer simply cannot compete with the human eye’s ability to recognize letters and numbers.
With OCR technology, however, certain software can now be trained to recognize a wide range of fonts and convert them accordingly.
How does OCR work?
OCR uses more than one approach when it comes to recognising text. The most basic way the technology distinguishes characters from pictures is through a technique known as pattern recognition. This involves a computer comparing objects within an image to letters already stored within its software. In other words, the software is equipped with a library of characters and the computer will search for the same patterns within your work and recognize when it finds a match.
The computer refers to its own catalog of characters to carry out pattern recognition
The problem with pattern recognition, at least for our purposes, is that it cannot detect handwritten text. No one writes in Times New Roman, after all. Thankfully, as the technology has become more sophisticated, it increasingly relies on a different tactic known as feature extraction.
Rather than trying to recognize full letters, feature extraction occurs when a computer detects certain features (lines and loops, for example) and understands that they signify a character. The letter ‘H’, for instance, will be picked up by the software whenever it detects two vertical lines joined in the middle by a smaller, horizontal line.
This technique means that a computer’s ability to recognize characters is not constrained to a limited number of fonts. From here, it can be trained to detect even handwritten text.
Neural networksMac Ocr App
Once software is able to perform feature extraction, it may be trained to detect features in handwritten text. Using neural networks, conversion programs like Scan2CAD can train OCR to recognize features from text that the user provides. Once it has learned to recognize a certain style of text from examples you have input, you can train the software to detect the same writing in different pieces of work.
If OCR is trained to recognize a particular individual’s handwriting (perhaps someone who creates technical drawings), it opens up a whole world of possibilities in terms of what they can do with their work.
Why convert handwritten text?
If you’re starting out with handwritten text (either scanned into your computer or written on a tablet), it will be in a raster format. Converting the image to a vector format will make your work more versatile and allow edits to be made by yourself and others.
Problems with raster imagesQuality issues
Raster images are comprised of pixels. This means that if you attempt to zoom into or rescale the image you’re working on, the overall quality will suffer. In a professional context this is not exactly ideal. Take technical drawings, for example—your work may appear blurry when people attempt to zoom in to inspect certain details. Plus, it’s useful to be able to resize an image for different purposes. This is not possible with a raster file without compromising its overall quality.
Vector images, on the other hand, are made up of objects. Each object (be it an arc, path, line, etc.) is defined by a mathematical equation. As every individual element has its own fixed relative position, re-scaling or zooming will not affect the overall quality of the image.
Editing your images with CAD software
Vector files are the ultimate choice if you are looking to edit your work with CAD or CNC software. The objects that comprise a vector image can be edited individually, allowing for a high level of accuracy in the process. Raster files are not compatible with CAD software and even the most basic adjustments will have an impact on the entire image.
Anyone working in an industry that uses CAD requires vector images to get the most out of their projects. If you are working on an architectural design that includes useful handwritten annotations, for example, you want your collaborators to be able to both read and amend the text where necessary. This level of precision and control is not possible with a raster image.
How to ensure successful conversion
Converting handwritten text, though possible, is by no means a simple task. You need to be realistic about the kind of characters a computer is going to be able to detect. To optimize your chances of success, you need to make sure your original image is viable. If you’re looking for professional results, the image needs to be cleaned up as much as possible. Consult our raster text quality checklist to ensure you have completed this stage.
Raster images with any of these problems are unlikely to convert successfully.
OCR software still has its limitations. If you find that your handwritten text cannot be converted automatically, it may be best to simply type over it with vector text.
Image quality
The biggest issue that is flagged up by conversion software is image quality. If you want good quality results, you need to start with a good quality image. Computers are incredibly powerful, but they’re not miracle workers.
If the original file is of a low resolution, for instance, the software will have a hard enough time picking up any details—let alone the handwritten text! Your image should be clean, crisp and contain no overlapping text. It should go without saying, therefore, that joined up handwriting will be impossible for a computer to detect.
Font
There is actually a font specifically designed to be read by OCR technology, handily named OCR-A. It’s commonly used for banking purposes—you’ll recognize it as the font on credit cards and cheques.
Generally speaking, for OCR purposes, established fonts like Arial are a suitable choice. This obviously isn’t realistic for what we’re covering here, but it’s a good rule of thumb to remember for general OCR practices. At least try to ensure your handwriting is as neat, consistent and clear as it can be.
As you’ll be using a non-standard font (handwriting), make use of technology like the aforementioned neural networks. If the relevant software is already trained to recognize your writing, you stand a higher chance of success when it comes to conversion.
The right software
Example of vector text strings. This is the desired result of vectorization because they can be edited and displayed correctly.
Apple Ocr Software
Repeat after me: not all conversion software is created equal! This is especially apparent when it comes to converting text, be it handwritten or typed. The result you’re looking for is a text string. If you use a cheap online converter, you may end up with what is known as exploded text.
The latter is not in fact text, but a collection of vector shapes that are basically impossible to edit. Scan2CAD, meanwhile, will ensure that conversion produces text strings—text that is rendered correctly, presented logically and can be edited easily.
How to convert handwritten text
Once your raster image has been cleaned up and you’ve run through the checklist, it’s time to convert. Scan2CAD allows you to do this with handwritten text, and it works in two stages.
The first stage is font training which, as we’ve previously mentioned, involves using neural networks to train the software to recognize your writing. This is a fairly complex process, but don’t worry—the computer is doing most of the work!
In short, you’ll need to create a new training set, add your text examples, train the neural network to recognize them and then test that it has learned the new training set. For detailed instructions head over to the ‘How to train Scan2CAD to recognize a font‘ section of the user manual.
Now that your handwriting is detectable by the software, you can carry out the conversion following the instructions under the convert a raster image with text section.
Once your image is saved in a vector format, you can start really making the most of your work!
Video: Converting handwritten text with Scan2CAD
OCR or Optical Character Recognition is a sophisticated software technique that allows a computer to extract text from images. In the early days OCR software was pretty rough and unreliable. Now, with the tons of computing power on tap, it’s often the fastest way to convert text in an image into something you can edit with a word processor.
These ten applications offer different takes on the task of OCR, without a price tag and across multiple platforms. If you’ve been looking for a way to turn pictures into words, you’ll almost certainly find the best free ocr software you need below.
FreeOCR (Windows 10)
FreeOCR is a basic free OCR software that offers all the core functionality you’d want from this type of software. For starters, if you have a TWAIN scanner (which is basically all of them) you can directly scan and extract text from paper. Image imports work as you’d expect as well. This includes multi-page documents in TIFF and PDF format as well.
Ocr Software For Mac Free
FreeOCR uses an Open Source engine originally developed by Hewlett Packard and eventually released by Google for everyone to use. It’s known as “Tesseract”. Tesseract has some neat features, but one of the most interesting is its automatic layout detection system. This means you don’t need to spend time tediously drawing rectangles around discrete blocks of text.
SimpleOCR (Windows 10)
SimpleOCR is a basic OCR package that can convert typed documents into text, directly from your scanner. The name, SimpleOCR, is quite literal in this case. If you have documents that exhibit any form of complexity, such as columns or that don’t have perfectly crisp scans, SimpleOCR can’t get the job done.
Of course, Simple Software is happy to sell you a more sophisticated solution for a few bucks, but if you just want to OCR some standard blocks of text, this is one option that won’t cost you a penny and is as simple to use as the name suggests. As a bonus, it supports handwriting recognition!
Easy Screen OCR (Windows, Mac, iOS & Android)
Easy Screen OCR is a small, best free OCR software that relies on a cloud-based, Google-powered recognition engine. As you might expect, this means that you need to have an active internet connection for the software to work. If that’s not an issue, you’ll find quite a useful tool here.
This OCR application is intended to extract text from screenshots, letting you copy text from websites or any other text that’s on-screen. What’s particularly cool about this is the support for more than 100 languages. If you want to translate (for example) Japanese text, you can simply take a screenshot and have Easy Screen OCR do it for. If this is something you need to do often, it also helps that you have the option to set custom hotkeys.
While this is not a traditional OCR application, there are plenty of workflows around these days that involve extracting text from the images you’re working with. Easy Screen OCR makes that task as easy as a few keystrokes.
Unfortunately the latest version of the software (1.4.2 and up) requires a subscription fee after 20 uses. However, older versions of the software are still free to use.
Capture2Text (Windows 10)
Capture2Text is an interesting little application with a narrow, but very useful function. It’s used to OCR text from what’s currently on your screen. You press a hotkey, select the zone of the screen you want to OCR and then it sends the result directly to the clipboard, so you can paste it into a word processor.
Capture2Text is a portable application, so you don’t need to install it. Just run the executable and you can use it on any Windows system from version 7 and up. The software is Open Source as well, so you can copy and modify it as you like, as long as you comply with the terms of the GNU license.
It’s not fancy by any means, but if you want to rapidly grab text from images that you are handling, this is a great piece of software to do it.
A9t9 (Windows 10)
If you’ve never ventured onto the Windows Store, you may be surprised to find that there are actually plenty of free and Open Source applications there. The a9t9 app is just such a gem and comes with no strings attached at all. There are no adverts and it promises pretty robust OCR performance.
A9t9 supports quite a long list of languages, although not as extensive as some of the other options on this list. If you’re a Windows 8.1 (or up) user who needs OCR right now and don’t want to spend any money, then simply click a single button on the Windows Store app and seconds later a9t9 will be processing your images into documents you can edit.
Adobe Scan (Android & iOS)
Adobe has an absolute ton of mobile apps out in the wild. Some are pretty great, while many seem to be little more than experiments. Adobe Scan falls into the former category. It’s a polished camera scanning and OCR application that will run on either Android or iOS. There’s no charge and you don’t need to be subscribed to any Adobe services.
Handwriting Ocr Software For Mac Windows 10
Of course, the final document is a PDF, which you can only directly edit with a paid version of Acrobat, but copying the text over to a word processor of your choice is no hassle, if we’re being honest.
One of the best features of the Adobe OCR software is its ability to recognize handwriting. Of course, good quality handwriting will be better recognized. Don’t expect it to decipher something you can’t read yourself. Like your doctor’s prescription notes.
There are a few other reasons to try out Adobe Scan. The ability to automatically scan, OCR and contacts from a business card is very cool. In fact, if you spend a lot of time meeting people, it could save you a heck of a lot of time.
The app also has, as you’d expect from the creators of PhotoShop, a small set of touch-up tools. So you can clean up the images before trying to extract text from them.
Office Lens (Android & iOS)
When the first phones with built-in digital cameras came to market the quality on offer was truly awful. The resulting images weren’t really useful for anything and you certainly couldn’t make out fine detail such as text.
Today, the sophisticated cameras found on even budget models offer high-resolution images that are good enough to use as a replacement for a document scanner. For example, the Google Drive app lets you make some pretty good scans using nothing but your phone camera.
The Office Lens app by Microsoft not only lets you scan documents, it allows you to OCR them on the fly. So you could take a snap of someone’s business card and immediately have the text ready to copy into your contacts list.
Office Lens is a standalone application, but its functionality is being built into other MS Office apps as well, so if you’re already using those it may not be necessary to download this independent app. Then again, sometimes a focused, lightweight app is exactly what the doctor ordered.
English OCR (iOS)Handwriting Ocr Software For Mac Windows 7
English OCR is a free OCR app for iPhone and iPad that makes it pretty easy to quickly take a snap of a document and convert the text in the photo into a digital format. It’s released under an Open Source licence, but the developers use adverts to help carry the costs of developing and supporting the application.
There is a paid “Pro” version that has exactly the same functionality as the free edition. The only difference is that the Pro version removes all adverts. So if you are OK with a few ads, you don’t need to put any money down at all.
Reading Between The Lines
The promise of a paperless world has, so far, failed to materialize. Which means OCR technology will remain an important part of the bridge between the digital and analogue worlds.
Armed with the OCR apps above, you should never have to laboriously retype a document ever again and, best of all, they won’t cost you a cent.
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