You've got a photo of a whiteboard, a screenshot of a paragraph you want to quote, or a scanned contract where the text isn't selectable — and retyping all of it by hand is not how you want to spend the next twenty minutes. OCR (optical character recognition) reads the text in an image and turns it back into real, copyable text. Here's how to do it free, plus which tool to reach for depending on what you're starting with.
Two Different Jobs — Pick the Right One
You have an image (photo, screenshot, scan) and want the text out of it → use Image to Text (OCR). It reads the image and gives you back plain text you can copy, edit, and paste anywhere.
You have a scanned PDF and want to keep it as a PDF, just searchable → use OCR PDF. It doesn't extract the text out — it adds an invisible, selectable text layer underneath the existing scanned image, so the PDF looks exactly the same but you can now search it, select text, and copy-paste from it like any normal PDF.
Use the first when you want the words. Use the second when you want to keep the document as a PDF but make it functional.
How to Extract Text from an Image
- Open Image to Text (OCR) and upload your photo or screenshot.
- Choose the language of the text in the image — English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, or English + Urdu combined are all supported.
- Click Extract Text.
- Your result shows up as editable text, along with a word and character count, and a one-click copy button.
This works well for:
- Photos of whiteboards, printed pages, or handwritten notes (typed/printed text works far better than handwriting)
- Screenshots where you can't select the text because it's actually a rendered image, not real text
- Business cards or labels where you need the details typed out somewhere else
- Bilingual documents — the English + Urdu option reads mixed-language text in a single pass
How to Make a Scanned PDF Searchable
- Open OCR PDF and upload the scanned PDF.
- Click to process — the tool reads every page and adds a text layer behind the existing scan.
- Download the result. It downloads as
searchable_yourfile.pdf— visually identical to the original, but now you canCtrl+Fto search it, select and copy text, and it'll show up in search results if you upload it somewhere that indexes PDF content.
This is the right move for old scanned contracts, archived paperwork, or any PDF made by scanning paper rather than exporting from a word processor — those PDFs are just images wearing a PDF file extension, and this is what fixes that.
Getting Better OCR Accuracy
Sharp, well-lit photos read far more accurately than blurry or dim ones. If you're photographing a page rather than scanning it, use good lighting and hold the camera steady and level.
Straighten the image first. Text at an angle is harder to read accurately than text that's level. If your photo is tilted, a quick crop and straighten before uploading noticeably improves results.
Printed text works much better than handwriting. OCR is built to recognize typefaces, not handwriting styles — printed or typed source material will always extract more accurately than cursive or handwritten notes.
Pick the right language. Selecting the correct language (or the combined option for mixed-language documents) matters — running English OCR over an Urdu document, or vice versa, will produce garbled results even if the image quality is perfect.
High contrast beats low contrast. Black text on a white background is the easiest case. Colored text on a busy or patterned background is the hardest — if you have a choice, photograph the plainest version of the source you can find.
Quick FAQ
Does this work on handwriting? It's built for printed and typed text. Neat block handwriting occasionally comes through, but cursive or messy handwriting generally won't extract reliably — that's a limitation of OCR technology generally, not a setting to fix.
What languages are supported? English, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, and a combined English + Urdu mode for mixed-language documents.
Will OCR PDF change how my document looks? No — the visible page stays exactly as it was scanned. OCR PDF only adds an invisible text layer underneath, which is what makes the text selectable and searchable.
Can I edit the text after extracting it from an image? Yes — the result from Image to Text lands in an editable text box, so you can fix any misread words before copying it out.
Is there a limit on how many pages a scanned PDF can have? No hard limit — every page in the PDF gets processed and gets its own text layer.
Related Free Tools
- Image to Text (OCR) — extract text from a photo or screenshot
- OCR PDF — make a scanned PDF searchable and selectable
- PDF to Word — need the content in an editable document, not just searchable?
- Crop Image — straighten and trim a photo before running OCR on it
- Compress PDF — shrink a scanned PDF after adding the text layer