What Is OCR and How Does It Work?
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) converts images of text into machine-readable text. Modern OCR engines like TextExtract use AI-powered recognition that handles over 100 languages, complex layouts, mixed fonts, and even handwriting.
Step-by-Step: Extract Text from Any Image
- Choose your image — Supported formats include JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and SVG up to 20 MB.
- Upload or paste a URL — Drag and drop, click to browse, or paste a publicly accessible image URL.
- Wait for processing — OCR analyzes the image in 2–5 seconds.
- Review and use your text — Copy to clipboard, download as .txt or .docx, or clean formatting with built-in tools.
Common Use Cases
- Extract text from screenshots
- Digitize scanned documents
- Convert handwritten notes
- Extract text from book photos
- Convert business cards to contacts
Tips for Better OCR Results
- Use images with at least 150 DPI resolution
- Dark text on light background works best
- Straighten images when possible
- Crop to the text area
- Avoid heavy JPEG compression
Frequently Asked Questions
What image formats can I extract text from?
TextExtract supports JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and SVG. Images up to 20 MB are accepted. PNG and TIFF produce the best OCR results because they preserve text sharpness without compression artifacts.
Can I extract text from handwritten notes?
Yes. TextExtract's AI-powered OCR can recognize most handwritten text, including meeting notes, whiteboard photos, and personal journals. Neat, consistent handwriting produces the best accuracy. Very messy or overlapping handwriting may reduce accuracy.
Is extracted text stored on your servers?
No. Clear images are recognized entirely in your browser, so they never reach our servers in the first place, and the extracted text stays in your browser. Images that on-device OCR cannot read confidently are sent to Google's Gemini API for a second attempt. Under Google's paid API terms, Google doesn't use that content to improve its products, including for training, and keeps it only for a limited period to detect abuse. We store and log nothing either way. Details are in our Privacy Policy.
How accurate is the text extraction?
For clean, high-resolution images with printed text, accuracy is typically above 98%. For photos with uneven lighting or handwriting, accuracy varies between 85–95% depending on image quality and text clarity.