Images and interactive documents are way ahead in grasping users' attention. This is an apparent reason why essential messages are often forwarded as images. However, interactive visual content is hard to edit. Thankfully, Google Drive OCR lets you extract text from images and PDFs. Keep reading the article to learn how to use Google Drive OCR for scanned documents.
⭐ Bonus: It is worth knowing about an excellent Google Drive OCR alternative before learning how it functions. SwifDoo PDF for Windows offers a better and more extensive OCR functionality that recognizes scanned PDFs or images and functions without limitations. Download and install SwifDoo PDF to enjoy advanced capabilities.
What is Google Drive OCR?
OCR is an advanced optical character recognition tool that helps identify and read images, image-only files, and scanned PDFs. OCR technologies offer a great way to scan GIF, PNG, JPG, and TIFF images.
By default, Google Drive comes with OCR integration. It is a web-based program that extracts text from images. Its embedded technology can process image-based files efficiently and quickly convert scanned PDFs to searchable and editable files.
How to Use Google Drive OCR
Indeed, you can directly use the Google Drive OCR functions to extract images from files and online documents easily. Here is an easy guide to using Google Drive OCR for scanned documents.
How to OCR a PDF With Google Docs
Google Docs offers advanced features for scanning a PDF document. Users can refer to Google Docs to quickly scan a PDF file to view and edit it online. Follow these guide to OCR a PDF using Google Drive OCR:
Step 1. Get into Google Drive using your Gmail account.
Step 2. Click New and choose File Upload to upload a PDF file to scan. Click Open.
Step 3. Get the uploaded file and choose to open it with Google Docs.
Step 4. Wait for Google Docs OCR to process, and then use and edit the file in Google Docs.
How to OCR an image with Google Docs
The Google Docs OCR allows an extensive feature to scan image-only PDF files. Users may also choose docs to extract text within the images using the doc's OCR technology. Check out the easy guide here:
Step 1. Get to Google Drive and choose New to upload the image with text.
Step 2. Right-click the uploaded image and open it with Google Docs.
Step 3. Wait for Google Doc OCR to process the file. Then, you can view the text extracted from the image file.
Benefits and Limitations of Using Google Drive OCR
Now that you know how to use Google Drive OCR for scanned documents, it is clear that Google Drive OCR is a beneficial technology. However, it has limitations too. Check out some of its benefits and limitations below:
✔️ Benefits of Google Drive OCR
OCR lets you read and access PDFs on multiple devices free of cost. The Google Drive OCR offers an efficient way to handle files online with a well-managed cloud-based storage system. It lets you extract text from image Google Drive and ensures quick image conversion to text.
❌ Limitations of Google Drive OCR
Google Drive OCR can handle files up to 2 MB in size. However, the drive makes it challenging to handle multiple documents simultaneously, and it cannot identify complicated text within PDFs.
Tips to Improve OCR Accuracy in Google Drive
The result of Google Drive OCR depends on the quality of the source file. However, there are ways to improve the accuracy of OCR. Here are some essential tips.
- Upload good-quality images: Ensure the source images are wrinkle-free and unharmed. Use original files with the cleanest appeal.
- Check for the resolution: Google Drive OCR can handle file sizes up to 1.5 mm x 1 mm or less. Hence, resizing the source file before uploading it for OCR is essential.
- Maintains a perfect contrast: Make sure the source images can distinguish between background and text. If not, try adding ideal contrast to the source file before uploading it.
- Remove unwanted distractions: Ensure the images are clean without much animation, noise, or colors. Upload clean and clear files to Google Drive. Users must try removing Denise before uploading it.
- Ensure the correct format and shape: Make sure the source file reads text upside down. If not, users can rotate and save the file in the proper format before uploading.
Alternatives to Google Drive OCR
Google Drive OCR offers a great way to extract text from image in Google Drive. However, the OCR comes with its limitations, as discussed above. So, choose a feature-rich alternative to enjoy advanced OCR features. The SwifDoo PDF is professional software with the technology to handle all PDFs and images and convert PDF to Text with OCR.
The SwifDoo PDF OCR tool makes it easy to read, annotate, and edit PDFs. The software successfully incorporates the advanced Optical Character Recognition capability to detect and convert text within images, image-only PDFs, scanned PDFs, and password-protected files.
SwifDoo PDF can process batch OCR PDFs without sacrificing its formatting. In addition, it provides comprehensive features to convert, merge, split, and compress PDFs with simple steps.
How to use SwifDoo PDF's OCR function:
Step 1. Download and install SwifDoo PDF.
Step 2. Access the Edit tab and choose OCR.
Step 3. In the Recognize Document window, choose a method to OCR the PDF. There are four options: text and images, text with original formatting, searchable text, images but non-editable, or pure text.
Step 4. Select the dedicated page range and click OK to OCR the PDF.
If you want unlimited OCR functionalities with advanced features, download the SwifDoo PDF to enjoy advanced OCR capabilities.
- Annotate PDFs by adding notes, bookmarks, etc.
- Convert PDFs to Word, Excel, and other editable files
- Edit, compress, organize, and split PDFs
Windows 11/10/8.1/7/XP
Conclusion
The article explains a straightforward guide to using Google Drive OCR for scanned documents. Choose Google Drive to detect text within images or PDF files easily. However, you may switch to SwifDoo PDF to enjoy advanced OCR functionalities without size limitations. The software integrates with OCR to extract text from image Google Drive and scanned PDFs.
Monica