Suppose you need the text from a document online. It would be extremely hectic to type all of the text yourself, and even if you were able to go through the grueling process of typing the whole file, there are many chances of human errors such as typos occurring during this process.
Well, we have a solution for you. Have you ever heard of OCR? OCR stands for optical character recognition. It’s a method by which you can take a screenshot of any document and have the text scanned and copied to your clipboard.
Hence, any screen capture text can be easily converted to machine-encoded text that you can paste onto your word files and edit as per your needs.
There are many applications of OCR technology. In fact, many industries, such as the banking and healthcare industries, make use of this technology daily.
You can easily convert your screen capture to text using Capture2Text. This article will give you step-by-step instructions on how you can use Capture2Text to perform ocr from screenshot. In addition, we’ll briefly mention some pros and cons of using this software and also provide a valuable alternative to Capture2Text, in case you need one.
Capture2Text
Capture2Text is a free software you can use for your OCR from screenshot needs. Capture2Text also has an excellent speech recognition feature and can recognize a wide variety of languages.
How to Use Capture2Text?
Follow these simple and straightforward steps to convert your screen capture to text using Capture2Text:
- STEP1： Download and install Capture2Text.
- STEP2： Press the activated OCR capture key (default: Windows Key + Q) after moving your mouse to the top-left portion of the screen capture text.
- STEP3： Move your mouse over all the text you wish to include to form a blue box. You can also reposition this blue box by holding the right-click button and moving it around wherever you want.
- STEP4： Press the “Enter” key or the left-click button. You shall see a pop-up appear and your text copied to clipboard.
Pros & Cons of Capture2Text
The Pros:
- Capture2Text is a free software.
- It’s extremely simple to use, from installation to default shortcut keys.
- It has a speech recognition feature.
- It also supports many different languages.
The Cons:
- Capture2Text currently doesn’t support Windows 11.
- The default OCR languages are Chinese, French, English, Japanese, German, Japanese, and Spanish. To recognize other languages, you’ll need to download them.
- It isn’t compatible with Mac.
- You need to set up detect language before OCR.
Capture2Text Alternative l Compatible with Mac & Windows
If you are concerned about not being able to use Capture2Text to extract your screen capture to text because you own a Mac, don’t be alarmed.
Simply use the alternative, PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter, instead.
To use PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter, follow these easy steps:
- STEP1： Launch PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter.
- STEP2： Press Ctrl+Alt+Z for Win, or CMD+1 for Mac to take a screenshot of OCR.
- STEP3： Once OCR from the screenshot is complete, a pop-up will appear showing the screen capture text.
- STEP4： Hit the “Translate” option to translate the text if needed.
To do batch screenshot OCR, press Ctrl+B, or right click the tray icon and select “Batch OCR”. Then use the same keyboard shortcuts to take multiple screenshots at once.
Why Choose PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter?
Some reasons why you should choose PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter include the following:
- It has a batch screenshot OCR feature, which means you can take up to 100 screenshots at a time.
- It’s cross-platform utility enables users to perform OCR from screenshots on both Windows and Mac operating systems.
- Offline OCR is supported.
Wrap Up
OCR technology is widely used every day and is certainly a helpful tool to know about. We hope the steps mentioned above clear any confusion regarding the use of Capture2Text and PDNob Screenshot to Text Converter.
So what are you waiting for? Begin your OCR journey today.