How to image to text: copy text from a picture
Add your images
Choose JPG, PNG or WebP files, drag them onto the page, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V (⌘+V on a Mac).
Choose the language
Pick the language of the text, then press Get text. Each image is read in your browser in a few seconds.
Copy or save
Edit the text if you need to, then copy it, download it as a .txt file, or save the images as a searchable PDF.
About this tool
Use this to copy a reference number from a photo of a letter, the text of a screenshot, a recipe from a cookbook page or the words on a sign. Optical character recognition (OCR) finds the text in the picture and turns it into real text you can paste anywhere.
Recognition runs in your browser with Tesseract, a well-established open-source OCR engine, so your photos stay on your device. It reads 28 languages, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Urdu, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Spanish and German. Sharp, well-lit photos of printed text taken straight on give the best results; handwriting is hard for any OCR engine.
Have a scanned PDF instead? Use OCR PDF to make it searchable, or PDF to Word to get editable text from it.
Questions
Are my images uploaded?
No. The recognition engine is downloaded to your browser from our site, and your images are read on your own device. They're never sent to us or anyone else.
Which image types can I use?
JPG, PNG, WebP, GIF and BMP. You can add up to 100 images at once, or paste a screenshot straight from your clipboard.
Which languages does it read?
28: English, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Malayalam, Marathi, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu and Vietnamese.
Can it read handwriting?
Only very neat handwriting, and not reliably. It's designed for printed text.
How do I get better results?
Use a sharp photo taken straight on, in good light, with the text filling most of the picture. Choose the right language. Crop away anything that isn't text.
Can I save the result as a PDF?
Yes. Download searchable PDF puts each image on its own page, with the recognised text hidden behind it, so you can search and copy it in any PDF reader.