[Term of the Day]: Optical Character Recognition
Term of the Day
“Optical Character Recognition (OCR)”
Definition — What is OCR and what is it used for?
Optical character recognition is usually abbreviated as OCR, also called text recognition, is a technology that converts images to text so that computers can extract text data from image files.
This can be a huge productivity shortcut for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs who deal with a lot of documents. Once you process a document with OCR technology, you can easily edit, search, index, and retrieve the text data. You can also compress the document into zip files, highlight keywords, or incorporate it into a website.
Probably the most well-known use case for OCR are:
This can be a huge productivity shortcut for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs who deal with a lot of documents. Once you process a document with OCR technology, you can easily edit, search, index, and retrieve the text data. You can also compress the document into zip files, highlight keywords, or incorporate it into a website.
Probably the most well-known use case for OCR are:
- Scanning printed documents into versions that can be edited with word processors, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
- Automating data entry, extraction and processing.
- Electronically depositing checks without the need for a bank teller.
- Placing important, signed legal documents into an electronic database.
- Recognizing text, such as license plates, with a camera or software.
- Sorting letters for mail delivery.
- Deciphering documents into text that can be read aloud to visually-impaired users.
- Archiving historic information, such as newspapers, magazines or phonebooks, into searchable formats.
- Translating words within an image into a specified language.
- Indexing print material for search engines.
Before OCR technology was available, the only option to digitize printed paper documents was to manually re-typing the text. Not only was this massively time-consuming, but also came with inaccuracy and typing errors.