How to Extract Text from an Image

You have a photo of a page, a screenshot of a message, or a picture of a receipt — and you need the words as text you can edit, not a picture you have to retype. OCR (optical character recognition) does exactly this: it reads the letters in an image and hands you back real, copyable text. This guide shows how to extract text from an image for free and how to get the most accurate result.

What is image-to-text OCR?

A photo or screenshot stores words as coloured pixels — your eyes read them, but a computer sees only a picture. OCR analyses those pixels, recognises the shapes of characters, and reconstructs the actual text. The result is something you can paste into a document, translate, search or edit like anything else you typed.

Extract text from an image, step by step

1. Open the tool. Go to Image to Text and upload your image — PNG, JPG, TIFF, BMP or WebP all work.
2. Scan. The image is read and the recognised text is returned.
3. Copy or download the text and use it anywhere.

When would you actually use this?

• Copy text from a screenshot — an error message, a chat, a slide you cannot select.
• Digitise a printed page — a book paragraph, a flyer, a form.
• Grab details off a photo — a business card, a receipt, a whiteboard.
• Save retyping — pull a quote or a table of figures straight into your notes.

How to get accurate results

• Sharp and well-lit.Blur is OCR's enemy — a clear, focused image reads far better than a dim, shaky one.
• Straighten the text. Keep lines horizontal; a tilted photo lowers accuracy.
• Good contrast. Dark text on a light background is ideal. Glare and shadows hurt.
• Printed beats handwritten. Typed text is highly accurate; handwriting is unreliable for any OCR engine.

Image or PDF? Pick the right tool

• Image to Text — for a single photo or screenshot. Gives you the raw text.
• OCR PDF — for a scanned PDF. Keeps the pages but adds a searchable text layer.
• PDF to Text — for a PDF that already has real text and you just want it as a .txt file.

Is it private and free?

OCR runs on our secure server. Your image is uploaded over an encrypted HTTPS connection, read in an isolated workspace, and deleted automatically the moment the text is sent back — nothing is stored, logged or shared. It is completely free, with no watermark and no sign-up.

Frequently asked questions

Which image formats work? PNG, JPG/JPEG, TIFF, BMP and WebP.

Is the text 100% accurate? On clean, sharp images it is very high, but always proofread — especially numbers, names and anything important.

Can it keep the original layout? OCR focuses on the words. Columns and tables may come out in reading order rather than a perfect grid, so a quick tidy-up may help.

Extract your text now

Open Image to Text and turn any photo or screenshot into editable text — free, secure and deleted right after. Working with a scanned PDF instead? Use OCR PDF.