How to extract text from an image
- Add an image: a photo of a document, a screenshot, a receipt or a book page.
- Choose the language of the text. English, Arabic, French, Spanish and German are available, plus mixed English–Arabic and English–French.
- Click Extract text. The words appear in the box, ready to copy or save as a .txt file.
The first time you use a language, its recognition data (about 2–10 MB) is downloaded once and cached, so later runs are much faster.
What is OCR?
OCR (optical character recognition) finds letters in a picture and turns them into real, editable text. PDF Free uses Tesseract, a well-known open-source OCR engine, running in your browser. Your images are not uploaded, which matters for IDs, contracts and medical documents.
Example: copying a quote from a book
Photograph the page, crop it to the paragraph you need, and extract the text. You can paste it straight into your notes or essay instead of typing it out.
Example: an Arabic document
Choose Arabic as the language. The text box switches to right-to-left so the result reads naturally. For documents that mix Arabic and English, choose English + Arabic.
How to get the most accurate text
- Use a sharp, well-lit photo taken straight on, with no shadows.
- Crop to the text you need; borders and pictures confuse OCR.
- Pick the right language. Accents and Arabic letters need the matching model.
- Screenshots work best, because the letters are perfectly clean.
- More tips in our guide: accurate OCR from photos.
Frequently asked questions
Can it read handwriting?
Neat, printed-style handwriting sometimes works, but OCR is designed for typed or printed text. Results on joined-up handwriting are usually poor.
Can I extract text from a PDF?
Convert the PDF pages to images with PDF to JPG, then add the images here.
Is it accurate?
On clean, printed text it is usually above 95%. Always check names, numbers and amounts before you use them.
Are my images uploaded?
No. Recognition runs in your browser; only the language data is downloaded from a public CDN.
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Last reviewed: 2026-11-08. Tools are provided as-is. Keep a copy of important originals. See our disclaimer.