Monday, September 13, 2021

Tools to Help You Convert Handwritten Notes into Digitize Text



Do you need to digitize handwritten notes for editing purposes or to preserve them for future reference? Handwriting to text conversion is made easier with the help of the finest OCR technologies. 

Do you need handwritten notes to be digitized to update or index them? Alternatively, would you want to copy text from an image of a handwritten quote? It is necessary to use a tool known as an optical character recognition (OCR) tool to do this.

Handwritten into Digitize Text
Handwritten into Digitize Text

Tools that help you to convert handwritten notes into the digitized text are known as image-to-text converters. Online tools are available to extract text from image files. For accurate image-to-text conversion, it uses the latest optical character recognition (OCR) technology. 

An OCR tool extracts text from images by analyzing handwriting or typed text. Even spell checkers in some tools provide additional assistance in the case of words that are not recognized. 

These tools can handle handwritten notes by students, office documents, and images with a few characters. Using six different OCR tools, we've reviewed six of the best conversion tools.

Tools used to convert handwritten notes into digitizing the text 


1. Prepostseo Image to Text Converter

This is a fantastic OCR tool for converting handwritten notes into digitized text. pictures to text in real-time, and it is free. The Prepostseo website is a dependable option for a wide range of individuals from a variety of different professions. 

With the help of the ‘Image to Text Converter', this helpful website has created its solution for converting images to text for its visitors. This tool can extract canned pictures, official documents, screenshots of websites, or any image that has a few characters from any source file.

Handwritten into Digitize Text

To use this tool to convert a picture to text, just follow the instructions outlined below:

  • The picture should be uploaded using the Upload Picture button. If you need to crop a picture, you may do it using our crop image tool.
  • Alternatively, you may paste the image's URL.
  • To extract text from pictures that have been submitted, click the Submit button.
  • You will get the text in a box, from which you may choose to copy the content to the clipboard, download the text as an a.txt file, or save it as a document to your computer.
  • For images that include text in several languages, you may choose a different language from the side panel to convert them to.

In addition, you may convert a pdf picture to text online utilizing our image OCR service.

2. Microsoft OneNote

Microsoft OneNote is a digital note-taking tool that also happens to be a very excellent handwriting OCR tool. Copy Text from Image may be found by right-clicking on an imported picture and selecting Copy Text from Picture from the drop-down menu. 

To extract letters from a picture and convert them to text that you can modify, use this tool on your computer. With this option, you can create a note in seconds, and Microsoft OneNote is a free, cloud-based tool that you can access from a variety of devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops.

Handwritten into Digitize Text

When it comes to handwritten OCR tools, the results may be inconsistent, as with any other. Overall, however, it performs admirably, even when dealing with difficult-to-read writing. Write your notes in all capital letters, and you'll discover that it's a more than enough tool. 

OneNote is a fantastic piece of software. OneNote's optical character recognition (OCR) function is one of several lesser-known capabilities that are worth exploring.

3. Google Drive and Google Docs

Google Drive and Google Docs are two of the most popular cloud storage services. Google offers a couple of tools that can convert handwriting text into digitized text, and chances are you already have one or both of them installed on your computer.

The first is Google Drive, which is free. Open the app on your phone and choose Scan from the drop-down menu that appears in the bottom right corner. 

The PDFs it saves aren't editable in Drive, but they are searchable inside the platform. This is the perfect option if you have a collection of handwritten notes that you just need to index.

However, if you need the ability to convert handwritten notes into the editable text as well, a combination of Google Drive and Google Docs is what you require.

To begin, scan your note and save it as a PDF document, just like you did previously. After that, go to your desktop and open drive.google.com in a new window. Locate the scanned file and right-click it to choose Open with > Google Docs from the drop-down menu.


If you do this in Docs, the PDF opens as a text file that you may modify, or copy and paste the contents of the PDF into another document. The editable version is also saved to Google Drive automatically as a backup.


There is a third alternative. Using the Google Lens app (which is included in the Google Photos app for iOS), you can search for real-world items just by aiming your camera at them. 

It is also effective with text. To decode printed or handwritten text, just move your phone's camera over it and wait a few seconds for it to be decoded. Then press the Enter key to finish the search.

4. Simple OCR

There are about 120,000 words recognized by this shareware application, and you have the option of adding additional terms to its database. It can recognize formatted text and can be configured to disregard formatting as well. 

handwriting to digitize text

SimpleOCR boasts up to 99 percent accuracy and can be configured to ignore formatting.

If the handwriting you're converting is sloppy, you may use the despeckle or noisy document features to clean it up.

SimpleOCR is a powerful tool, particularly since it can be configured to decode whole texts, parts of documents, or several documents in a single batch. The aforementioned accuracy grade, on the other hand, is obviously for printed text in images and less so for handwritten media, as previously stated. When comparing SimpleOCR to Microsoft's or Google's tools, you'll most likely discover that the latter performs much better.

5. Online OCR

This user-friendly online OCR enables you to complete the whole process of uploading a picture, selecting an output format, and downloading the finished file in less than a minute. The fundamental functionality of this free service does not need registration. You'll just need to complete a captcha to get started.

In a test using a PNG picture of handwriting converted to TXT format, Online OCR spat out nonsensical nonsense that did not resemble the handwriting at all, so take this tool with a grain of salt.

handwriting to digital text

Because it is inexpensive and simple to use, there is no harm in trying it out and seeing if you receive better results. One advantage of using Online OCR is that it can identify a wide range of languages.

6. TopOCR

TopOCR is a piece of handwriting recognition software that is among the finest available. The TopOCR software works with images taken by a scanner or digital camera and shows them in a dual-pane style, with the original picture on the left and the converted image on the right. 

If your handwritten writing is shown from left to right, you may expect it to function fairly effectively. If the software has columns, probably, it will not be correct. TopOCR is a fast and efficient OCR solution that supports 11 languages and can output to PDF. 

The free trial edition is capable of allowing you to quickly determine whether or not the tool will meet your requirements before choosing whether or not to purchase the complete, feature-unlocked product. One potential drawback of TopOCR is that it is only compatible with Windows-based systems.

7. FreeOCR

FreeOCR is a Windows-based tool that works with both pictures and PDFs. Although conversion time is very quick, accuracy is sub-par. 

handwriting to digital text

Handwriting recognition technology such as that used by FreeOCR was never intended to be used to convert scanned handwriting to text in the first place. 

Others claim that accuracy improved as a result of regularly using the software for that purpose while closely following directions in user manuals and discussion forums.  

Conclusion

Good handwriting to a text converter is dependent on the technology behind it: OCR. Additionally, it is important to know your overall purpose for writing the text. 

You may find it easier to use a web app to scan handwriting to text for school and remote learning or decide which app to use by understanding what you need, whether the scanner needs to be online or offline, and which operating system the app should run on (Mac or Windows). 

You can also convert many different handwritten notes using a document camera with OCR technology. This post includes tools that can convert scanned handwriting to digitized text using this technology. 

If you don't want to use an app, you can also convert your handwriting into digital text in other ways. Using a tablet or stylus for better accuracy or a document camera could be a good option. OCR technology can also be used on a device, so choosing one with high accuracy is essential.