OCR (Text Reader)

OCR reads letters from a picture and turns them into computer text.

What it does

OCR reads letters from a picture and turns them into computer text.

Binarization: Black/white conversion • Character: A single letter

How it works

• Look for text shapes in the image.
• Match the shapes to letters and numbers.
• Save the result as editable text.

Uses and applications

• A phone can copy text from a photo of homework.
• A scanner can turn a paper form into searchable text.
• A mail system can read addresses on envelopes.

In short

OCR turns text on paper into digital text.

Related methods

• YOLO (You Only Look Once): Object detection is often used first to find text regions.
• CTC (Alignment): Aligns predicted characters with text when lengths differ.

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