Free, online OCR image-to-text converter works like a charm

Have you ever received a document, such as a PDF or JPG and wanted to convert it to text? As a journalist, this happens to me a lot because I prefer the document -- such as a press release -- to be editable (such as a Word doc). I found a free site that will do the conversion for you.

Software that can convert an image into text is often referred to as OCR, which stands for Optical Character Recognition. This is particularly handy if you want to edit the document, such as move the words around or add more.

I stumbled upon a free OCR program that doesn't require you to install any software, works with any browser and any operating system. Called Free-OCR.com, this service lets you upload any PDF, JPG, GIF, TIFF or BMP file and within a couple of seconds will display the raw text for you to copy into an editable document, such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, Wordpad, and so forth.

No personal information is required. Simply choose the file on your hard drive and click Send File.

The only catch is files must not exceed 2MB in size (or no wider or higher than 5000 pixels) and there is a limit of 10 image uploads per hour.

But for free, hey, this is pretty cool. And it works well, too. But because we don't know exactly who else can read these documents -- for example, the webmaster for this site -- I'd urge users not to upload anything that might contain potentially sensitive data, such as personal info or confidential company notes, and so on.

In order to increase it's accuracy, this site also asks you to select one of six languages to convert the image to: English, French, Italian, Spanish, German and Dutch. Note: It won't convert, say, French to Italian, but by selecting a given language will work to recognize specific letters, accents, etc.

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