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

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.

Highly Accurate Solutions

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 (MacOS)

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.

Why Cisdem PDF Converter OCR?

• Extract text from PDF image and image
• OCR PDF and image to well-formatted PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages, etc.
• Batch process PDF images
• Convert native PDF to 16 formats
• Recognize 200+ languages from PDF image
• Create PDF from other documents (Word, PowerPoint, etc.)
• Compress and protect PDFs when creating PDF from others

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How to Extract Text from PDF Image on Mac?

1. Download and install Cisdem PDF Converter OCR onto your mac;
   Free Download
2. Import single or multiple PDF images into the Converter interface;
3. Turn OCR button ON, choose page range and file language;
4. Select output as PDF or Text;
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;

#2 Icecream PDF Converter Pro (Windows)

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.

How to Extract Text from PDF Image on Windows?

1. Download and install Icecream PDF Converter Pro;
2. Go to From PDF interface;
3. Add PDF images to the program, choose output as Word Doc;
4. Then click on Convert button and choose to use OCR;
5. Open the Word output, extract or copy text from the PDF image on Windows.

#3 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; 
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 text, go to Tools>Export PDF and select an output format.

Online Free Solutions

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;

#4 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. Login into your Google account;
2. Go to Google Drive>New>File upload to import your PDF image file; 
3. Right click on the imported PDF image and choose Open with>Google Docs; 
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; 
5. (Optional) If you want to extract text from PDF image and save in an individual file, go to File>Download as>Txt.

#5 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;

#6 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;
3. Choose 1 or 2 file languages, select output format as Text and fill in the page numbers you want to extract text from;
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.

Conclusion

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.