You just finished a long lecture or a meeting. Your notebook is full of handwritten notes. Important points, key data, diagrams with labels, and definitions you wrote down in a hurry.
Now you need them in digital form.
So what do you do?
Most people either type everything out manually or just take a photo and leave it in their gallery. But typing it takes too much time, and the photo version does not work when you need to edit or share the content in text form.
The good news is that OCR technology solves this. You can convert your handwritten notes into editable text with ease. This guide will walk you through the complete process. So keep reading to learn.
What is OCR?
OCR is the short form of “optical character recognition.” It is an advanced technology that can read the printed or embedded text in any image file or PDF document. It then converts that text into digital text that can be read and edited by computer systems.
This technology is widely used by image-to-text converter tools. The process is simple. First, it cleans up your image and sharpens it for easy text detection. Then it scans each character and matches it against stored patterns in its database. Finally, it puts everything together and gives you clean digital text as the output.
Modern OCR tools are trained on machine learning, and they keep improving over time. Even messy handwriting and blurred images can be read accurately by a good OCR tool today.
How to Convert Handwriting to Text With OCR?
You can convert handwriting to digital text using OCR-based image-to-text converters online. Now we will discuss the whole process to give you a better understanding.
1) Convert Paper to Image
The first step is obvious. You need to convert your paper documents into images. You can do it with the help of a mobile camera. But make sure you capture photos in proper lighting. You can also get the paper scanned by a scanner. This is a better way, as the scanners are designed to accurately convert paper documents into images.
2) Select a Good OCR Tool
There are many such tools on the internet. But not all of them provide the same level of accuracy, speed, and data privacy. The complexity of handwriting is another issue. If your writing is neat and clean, it can be detected easily. But if you write in a hurry, the words may appear scattered, and sentences may not follow a straight line. In such cases, it becomes tough for an ordinary tool to extract text from such complex handwritten notes.
So, you have to choose a good tool carefully. A better way is to search on the Internet and select one of the top tools. You can test them with one image and check if they work properly. To demonstrate the process, we selected Image to Text from the search results.
3) Convert Handwritten Notes to Digital Text
Well, after you have selected the tool, it’s time for the conversion. Upload your image to the tool by clicking on the “Browse” button. You can also drag and drop the images into the specified box, which is a relatively easy way.
If you face any access issues or slow connectivity while using such tools on your system, especially on Windows devices, using a VPN for Windows can help ensure a smoother and more reliable experience.
After uploading, click on the “Submit and Extract” button. The tool will convert your handwritten notes into digital text in a few seconds.
4) Proofread and Copy
Proofreading handwritten text is necessary to check for anything missing, like punctuation marks and spelling errors. This is because the handwriting usually does not follow any specific writing structure. The same letter could be written in multiple styles in the same sentence. So the tool may be confused while scanning it.
After proofreading, you can copy the text to your clipboard directly by clicking on the “Copy” button or download a .txt file using the “Download” button.
Wrapping it Up
Converting handwritten notes to digital text is no longer a difficult task. A good OCR tool does the job in seconds. You just need to follow the right process.
Make sure the lighting is good when taking a photo. Shadows and uneven lighting are the biggest reasons for poor output quality. Also, keep your writing as straight as possible because tilted or scattered lines can confuse the tool.
Furthermore, if your first result has too many errors, you should upload the same image again and extract the text. And the last thing, always proofread the final output before using it anywhere. One quick read saves a lot of problems later.
