August 19, 2020
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Here we list 6 ways to extract or copy text from a PDF image, maybe that’s too many for you. For excellent and quick result, go to Cisdem PDF Converter OCR for Mac or IceCream PDF Converter for Windows.
A normal PDF contains texts, images, links, media and various interactive elements. But a PDF image contains image only, all the original texts turn to be an image, it may be created from image files or scanned to be PDF format, users are not allowed to extract or copy any text from such a PDF image without OCR. Actually, it is not a troublesome problem to extract or copy text from PDF image today, here we have 6 solutions in following 2 parts for you, including online free options.
Have been offering PDF solutions for years, we fairly understand our users. Most of them want to have a try on online free solutions in the beginning, but pick a dedicated program for their work in the end, because time saving and efficiency are always prior to the cost. Therefore, we put those highly accurate solutions to extract text from PDF image on the top of our list. You can check the details and download for a free try.
Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a mac productivity program to help you work with PDF files, it converts your PDF files to virtually all popular file formats, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ePub, Keynote, Pages, Text, total 16 formats. Therefore, even without an expensive PDF editor, you can export PDF as other editable format and edit in your exisiting file editors. In addition, it allows creating PDF from Word, PowerPoint and other files, so you can easily share or print your files in PDF format.
As to its OCR feature, it not only converts your PDF image or image files to searchable PDF for easy text extraction or copying, but also exports them as well-formatted Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages, ePub format. Still, you can convert multiple PDF image simultaneous. Its OCR function does equivalently excellent job on recognizing PDF image in English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, etc.
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Cisdem doesn’t have a mac version, but there is a Windows program working similar as Cisdem, that’s Icecream PDF Converter Pro.
Icecream PDF Converter Pro is designed to convert and create PDFs on Windows. It helps convert PDF to Word, JPG, TIFF, BMP, TIFF, PNG, GIF, EPS, WMF and HTML, also allows users to create and merge PDF from Word, Excel, Image, ePub or HTML. One thing Icecream PDF Converter Pro excels others is that, it allows setting output file layout. With regard to the OCR feature, the program can auto detect a image-based PDF and apply OCR on the PDF image, so users can extract or copy text from a PDF image.
If you work on PDF files on a daily basis, you probably have installed Adobe Acrobat, in this case, to extract or copy text from PDF image becomes extremely easy for you. But for users who installed Adobe Acrobat Reader only, you cannot extract or copy the PDF image text, since there is no OCR feature in Adobe Reader.
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For users who want to extract text from PDF image online free, here we also list 3 top and convenient online tools. But before the guide, we’d better have a understanding about limitations of online free tools.
Google Docs is an online free service offered by Google to work on PDF, Word, Image and other documents, users can open, view, edit and export the files. Also, it is capable of processing OCR on scanned PDF and image file. But the biggest problem of using Google Docs to extract text from PDF image is, there are OCR errors and no formatting will be kept in the output file.
OnlineOCR (onlineocr.net) is a simple online OCR tool to directly extract or copy text from PDF image or image files, the recognized text will be displayed on the webpage for easy and fast check. In addition, it supports exporting PDF image as Word or Excel. But you will have to manually revise the OCR errors.
Comparing to above 2 online free tools to extract text from PDF images, Convertio supports more file languages and more output formats. But the main reason why I recommend Convertio OCR lies in that it helps to perform OCR on a file consisting of 2 languages, which will greatly improve the OCR accuracy when dealing with bilingual files. However, you are only allowed to convert 10 pages for free.
6 ways to extract or copy text from PDF image would be quite enough for you, and for many users seeking a solution on this, they give more credits to a professional standalone OCR program, which is safer to use, faster to process OCR, more accurate on result, even there are extended features offers to boost your productivity on working with PDF files. What about you? Do you have a better advice on this? You can share us in the comment.
Connie has been writing for Mac productivity and utility apps since 2009. Each review and solution is based on her practical tests, she is aways energetic and trustworthy in this field.