Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Camera to text app

L

LMD75

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 5, 2010
317
1
I am living overseas and get many letters sent in a foreign language. I normally have to manually type the whole contents into Google Translate or use my great iPhone app (iSpeak Finnish).

Can anyone recommend a good app that will let you capture a photo of a letter or sign and turn it into a text document (OCR) which can then be easily pasted into a translation app or google translate?
 
Last edited:
Just purchased an app called DocScanner 4. The OCR capability does not work and produces random characters which do not resemble the original document. However the app lets you export the image to a PDF and lets you email it.

Using the same image captured from within the app, I ran it through Adobe Acrobat X Professional, and the OCR capability produces almost a perfect result.

Are there any good OCR iPhone apps out there or am I doing something wrong?
 
There is an app called word lens that can translate on the fly by focusing the camera on a document. At the moment they only support Spanish, but I think they said they will add further languages. They have a reverse word demo included for free so you get an idea.

Android version of google goggles can do translations, don't know if the iphone version can
 
I have seen Word Lens in action - Excellent concept but only Spanish support :(
 
Email the developer--they said more language packs were coming soon. Maybe you can show interest and get yours a little faster as a result.
 
I use Perfect OCR. I don't get a lot of use out of it, but when I need it, it always seems to work quite well. But it is currently $3.99.
 
MEJ: What language do you OCR? I have tried a few free online solutions and they produce similar results (useless unreadable characters). However they seem to do English fine. I downloaded a free 30 day trial of Acrobat Pro and it is almost 100% accurate with Finnish OCR.
 
LMD75 said:
MEJ: What language do you OCR? I have tried a few free online solutions and they produce similar results (useless unreadable characters). However they seem to do English fine. I downloaded a free 30 day trial of Acrobat Pro and it is almost 100% accurate with Finnish OCR.
Click to expand...

I've only used it a few times. I've done English and German. Then I cut-n-pasted the text into a separate translation program.
 
Thank MEJ. I emailed the developer of Perfect OCR and they told me that their product does not contain my required language dictionary and therefore will result in poorer OCR (its not just about the symbols /characters).
 
LMD75 said:
Thank MEJ. I emailed the developer of Perfect OCR and they told me that their product does not contain my required language dictionary and therefore will result in poorer OCR (its not just about the symbols /characters).
Click to expand...

Sorry, doesn't sound like a right app for you then. Just to be clear, I just use it for OCR, not language translation. I have another app for that. But if the OCR doesn't recognize the characters, then you may need to keep looking.

If you want to post a screenshot or two, I'd be happy to run them through the app and post the output so you can get an idea of how well it does or doesn't do.
 
Many thanks MEJ. I would like to take you up on the offer of translation. Attached is a jpg of some Finnish Text. Adobe Acrobat Pro translates this perfectly but I only have a trial. Please can you run it through your Perfect OCR for me?

I use a superb translation app called "iSpeak Finnish". They have many other languages and the TTS is superb.
 

Attachments

  • Finnish sample.jpg
    Finnish sample.jpg
    377.8 KB · Views: 132
I've tried it a few times and keep getting: Could not recognize text

So I guess you're just going to have to keep searching. Sorry.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back