Google Docs OCR & Read Clipboard

Post date: Mar 2, 2011 3:45:04 PM

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) converts images of words to characters you can read or edit on a computer. When combined with text to speech software, OCR can help you read printed documents easily. According to a recent posting to Google Blogspot, Google Documents can now convert images to text with OCR in 34 languages.

• • OCR usually doesn't convert images to text with 100% accuracy. You can improve the accuracy by making sure that your image is straight, evenly lit and sharp. Mobile phone cameras and webcams may be able to provide acceptable quality if the letters are large enough, but for best results, use a high quality digital camera on a stand or a document scanner.

  • If you have a Google Documents or Gmail account, log on, then navigate to the Google Documents upload page

  • Select an image file to upload.

  • Check Convert text from PDF or image files to Google Docs documents. Choose a language, then upload the document.

  • Navigate to the new document and highlight the text.

  • Use the keyboard shortcut to copy the text to the clipboard. (Ctrl + C on a standard keyboard or Command + C on an Apple OSX keyboard)

  • If you have installed the Read Text Extension and are using the Writer, Presentation, Drawing, Web Writer, Calc, Formula or Basic IDE application, you can use Tools > Add-ons > Read Clipboard to read the text aloud. Otherwise, you can paste the contents of the clipboard to an on-line web based text reader like Vozme.com to read the text aloud.