Tesseract OCR

What is Tesseract OCR ?

Tesseract OCR is an open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine developed by Google. It is widely considered one of the most accurate OCR engines available, capable of extracting text from images, scanned documents, and PDFs with high precision. Tesseract supports over 100 languages and is used in various applications, including document scanning, text extraction, and data entry automation.

Features

• Multi-language support: Recognizes text in numerous languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and many more.
• High accuracy: Utilizes advanced OCR algorithms to deliver precise text extraction, even from low-quality or distorted images.
• Customizable: Allows users to train the engine with specific fonts or languages for improved accuracy in specialized scenarios.
• ** Compatibility**: Works with various image formats, including PNG, JPG, BMP, and TIFF.
• Integration-ready: Can be easily integrated into applications using APIs or command-line tools.
• Open-source: Free to use, modify, and distribute under the Apache 2.0 license.

How to use Tesseract OCR ?

1. Install Tesseract OCR: Download and install the software from the official repository or use a package manager like apt-get or Homebrew.
2. ** Install language models**: Download the language packs for the languages you need (e.g., eng for English).
3. Convert images to text:
   • Use the command-line interface: tesseract input_image.png output_text
   • Specify a language: tesseract input_image.png output_text -l eng
4. Refine results: Pre-process images (e.g., binarization, deskewing) to improve OCR accuracy if needed.

Frequently Asked Questions

What file formats does Tesseract support?
Tesseract supports common image formats like PNG, JPG, BMP, and TIFF. It can also process PDFs with the help of additional tools like pdf2tiff.

Can Tesseract OCR handle handwritten text?
Tesseract can recognize handwritten text, but the accuracy depends on the quality of the handwriting and the training of the OCR engine. For best results, use pre-trained handwriting models.

Is Tesseract OCR free to use?
Yes, Tesseract OCR is completely free and open-source, allowing users to modify and distribute it under the Apache 2.0 license.