7 Ways to Extract or Copy Text from PDF Image (Online Free Included)

Jose Henline
July 10, 2023 Preview 16.1K Preview 0
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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 7 solutions in following 3 parts for you, including online free options.

Highly Accurate Solutions: Extract Text from PDF Image Offline

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.

#1 Cisdem PDF Converter OCR (Windows and macOS)

Cisdem PDF Converter OCR is a 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, Text, 15+ formats. Therefore, even without an expensive PDF editor, you can export PDF as other editable formats 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, ePub format. Still, you can convert multiple PDF image simultaneously. Its OCR function does equivalently excellent job on recognizing PDF image in English, Arabic, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Czech, etc.

Main Features of Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

  • Extract text from PDF image and image
  • OCR PDF and image to well-formatted PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, TXT, etc.
  • Batch process PDF images
  • Convert native PDF to 15+ formats
  • Recognize 17 languages from PDF image
  • Create PDF from other documents (Word, PowerPoint, etc.)

How to Extract Text from PDF Image on Windows or Mac?

  1. Download and install Cisdem PDF Converter OCR onto your windows or mac.
    Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
  2. Import single or multiple PDF images into the Converter interface.extract text from pdf image cisdem 01
  3. Select output as PDF or Text.extract text from pdf image cisdem 02
  4. Click on settings icon and choose file language, continue with OK.extract text from pdf cisdem 03
  5. Click Convert to save PDF image as searchable PDF or editable Text format.
  6. Open the output file, extract text or copy text from the PDF image.

Also, you can refer to this YouTube tutorial video to extract texts:

#2 Adobe Acrobat (MacOS & Windows)

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.

How to Extract Text from PDF Image in Acrobat?

  1. Open PDF Image with Adobe Acrobat.
  2. Go to Tools > Enhance Scans.
  3. Go to Recognize Text > In This File and select file language to start Adobe OCR on the PDF image. extract text from pdf image in adobe01
  4. Now you can extract text or copy text from the PDF image file in Acrobat.
  5. (Optional) If you want to save the PDF image as text, go to Tools > Export PDF and select an output format. extract text from pdf image adobe02

Free Solutions: Extract Text from PDF Image Online

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.

Limitations of Online Free Solutions

  • OCR errors to recognize text from PDF Image
  • File size limit
  • File pages limit
  • Time consuming to upload file or process OCR
  • Potential risks of information leakage
  • No batch processing

#3 Google Docs (Online Free)

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.

How to Copy Text from PDF Image Online Free with Google Docs?

  1. Log in to your Google account.
  2. Go to Google Drive > New > File upload to import your PDF image file. extract text from pdf image google docs01
  3. Right click on the imported PDF image and choose Open with Google Docsextract text from pdf image with google02
  4. Then the PDF image text appears in Google Docs, the OCR finishes, you can copy text from the PDF image now or edit if necessary. extract text from pdf image google03
  5. (Optional) If you want to extract text from PDF image and save in an individual file, go to File > Download as > Txt.

#4 OnlineOCR (Online Free)

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.

How to Copy Text from PDF Image Online Free with OnlineOCR?

  1. Go to Onlineocr.net.
  2. Click Select file to upload PDF image.
  3. Choose file language from the list.
  4. Select output as Text or others.
  5. Click Convert to start OCR your PDF image to text.
  6. Extract or copy the recognized text from PDF image or download output file.onlineocr pdf image

#5 Convertio (Online Free)

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.

How to Copy Text from PDF Image Online Free with Convertio?

  1. Go to Convertio OCR.
  2. Upload one or more PDF images to the program.convertio pdf image01
  3. Choose 1 or 2 file languages, select output format as Text and fill in the page numbers you want to extract text from.convertio pdf image02
  4. Then click Recognize to start OCR.
  5. Download the text file and you will be able to extract or copy text from the PDF image.

Related Solutions: Extract Text from PDF Without OCR

When dealing with native PDF instead of those created by scanners or images, extracting text from PDF becomes extremely easy, there is no need to use OCR feature. Here are 2 efficient ways for you.

Cisdem PDFMaster (Windows and macOS)

The easiest way to extract text from PDF files is to use the shortcuts like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. It is quick and can be achieved in most PDF readers or even browsers, however, this method fails when the PDF document is protected from copying or changing. To kill such a problem once for all, we recommend an efficient and powerful PDF editor, that is, Cisdem PDFMaster

Quite literally, it is a program allowing users to work on all kinds of PDF documents like a PDF master, from editing the text in PDF easily to converting PDF into various other formats. With the help of this software, copying text from secured PDF and scanned PDF is no longer tricky. 

How to Extract Text from PDF with Cisdem PDFMaster?

  1. Download and install Cisdem PDFMaster on your computer.
    Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7 Free Download macOS 10.13 or later
  2. Open the PDF in Cisdem by clicking Open Files.extract text from pdf cisdem01
  3. For native PDF, head to Edit tab > Edit icon in the secondary menu. 
    For secured PDF, enter the permission password to enable editing by clicking Enable Editing > OK.extract text from pdf cisdem02
  4. Drag your mouse to select the text you want to copy, press Ctrl+C on the keyboard, or hit the Copy icon from the floating menu.extract text from pdf cisdem03
  5. Now the selected text should be in your clipboard, press Ctrl+V to paste it into your destination file. Or, right-click on the page and pick Paste from the drop-down menu.

Python

When entering "Extract Text from PDF" in Google search field, we found that most people are eager to know how to extract text from PDF using Python. Actually, Python has multiple well-integrated libraries that can help you to extract text from PDF files effectively, like PyPDF2, PyMuPDF, PDFQuery, PDFMiner, PDFPlumber, etc. Here, we will take one of these most commonly used libraries as an example--PyPDF2.

PyPDF2 is a free, open-source Python library, capable of performing a lot of operations on a PDF, like merging, splitting, cropping as well as extracting text from PDF.  

How to Extract Text from PDF in Python?

  1. Install Python. Make sure that you have a Python environment, if not, download it from here.
  2. Install pip in Python. Download it here and run the following code to install:
    pip.python get-pip.py
  3. Install PyPDF2. Simply enter the following command:
    pip install PyPDF2
  4. Extract text from PDF. You can perform text extraction like this:

    from PyPDF2 import PdfReader

    reader = PdfReader("example.pdf")

    page = reader.pages[0]

    print(page.extract_text())

  5. You can also determine the text orientation you want to extract, e.g:

    # extract only text oriented up

    print(page.extract_text(0))

    # extract text oriented up and turned left

    print(page.extract_text((0, 80)))

Conclusion

7 ways to extract or copy text from various PDF 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 better advice on this? You can share us in the comment.

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Jose Henline
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Jose specializes in reviews, how-to guides, top lists, etc. on PDF, data recovery and multi-media. On his spare time, he likes to travel or challenge some extreme sports.

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