This article is maintained by the team at commabot.
If you've ever wondered how to convert images of text into actual, editable text, Tesseract OCR is your go-to tool. This guide is designed for beginners, so we’ll walk through the basics of using Tesseract in a simple and easy-to-understand manner.
What is Tesseract OCR?
Tesseract is an open-source optical character recognition software that can read text from a wide range of image formats and convert them into editable text. Originally developed by HP, it’s now maintained by Google. It’s known for its high accuracy and is widely used in various applications like document scanning, data entry, and information retrieval.
Setting Up Tesseract
Installation: To get started with Tesseract, you first need to install it. Tesseract is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. You can download the appropriate version for your system from the downloads page. Follow the installation instructions provided for your operating system.
Language Files: By default, Tesseract supports English. If you need to work with other languages, you can download additional language files from the same repository.
Using Tesseract OCR
Once Tesseract is installed, using it is fairly straightforward:
Prepare Your Image: Choose a clear, legible image of text to convert. Tesseract works best with high-contrast, well-lit images.
Command-Line Execution: To convert an image to text, open your command line or terminal, and navigate to the folder containing your image. Then, use the following command:
tesseract image.png output
This command tells Tesseract to convert image.png (replace with your image’s file name) into text and save it in a file named output.txt.
Specifying Languages: If you're working with languages other than English, use the -l flag followed by the language code:
tesseract image_name.ext output_base -l spa
This command is for Spanish text recognition.
Tips for Better Accuracy
Image Quality: Ensure that your image is clear and the text is legible. The quality of input significantly affects OCR accuracy.
Preprocessing: Sometimes, you may need to preprocess the image for better results. This can include adjusting brightness, contrast, or converting it to grayscale.
Language Specification: Always specify the correct language for better accuracy.