OCR for Mac – 12 Best Apps to Covert Scanned Documents, Images Into Text

It’s time for OCR, we need its help now in Mac. If we want to digitize the paper document then we want to go for OCR software. It reduces the number of paper we need and if you want to create a paperless office then it is good choice. You can get this OCR for both paid and for free trail. And today in this post, I'm going to list both paid and free OCR that can match well for your MAC.

List of Free Apps:

1.Google Drive
google drive logo


Many of us think Google drive only for document storage purpose, but it can also be used to PDF to text files and image files. But you can use this facility only when you have file smaller than 2MB. And it is limited to the first 10 pages.
To use this option go to Google Drive Settings -> Upload Settings from that you can see Convert Text from Uploaded PDFs and image files. Coming to accuracy, it depends on the original quality of the file that you scan.

2. LEAD TOOLS OCR
leadtools ocr
Even it is free app, we can worth using it. Because it gives you hundred percent result. If you scan text that will be 100% correct and clear. But formatting text will not be that much clear. If the documents that you scan are not too long then reformatting of that will not be that much long. You can scan one part of the document by choosing “Interative” and “Draw zone” to know the highlighting tool. But it is free only for one page PDFs.

3. PDF OCR X Community Edition

PDF OCR X
It is a standalone OCR app for Mac. You can use this app when you clear and accurate paper that has to be scanned then you can use this app. But for old document and non-accurate document it will not produce much accurate result.
It is free version so it is very limited you can only scan single page. If you want to use it fully then you have to upgrade it.

4. Evernote
evernote for mac
It is a note taking application, when you upload document it will automatically start performing OCR operation by scanning the file. But you cannot know the real time about how long will the processes takes place. You can save the file as text searchable PDF by selecting the ”Save Searchable PDF As”

5. Free OCR online
free online ocr
Before telling briefly about this free OCR i wish to say that this COR online free service is based on the Tesseract OCR which is an open source. You can scan images of different formats like PNG, BMP, TIFF, JPEG for text. This app allows you to upload the images fastly and choose either to display the text from the web browser or to convert them into any format. You can try this free app when your image is very basic and for instant solution.

SEE ALSO : Top 10 Free CD/DVD Burning Software For Mac

Paid OCR Apps:

Coming to paid apps, it has greatest advantage that you can demand for quality and you don’t need to compromise with the features provided by the free apps. And your requirement will be highly satisfied by the paid apps. now take a look at the list of paid OCR apps that can fit your requirements,
ABBYY Finereader Pro for Mac ($99.99) – OS X 10.8 and higher version:

ABBYY Finereader Pro

  • It is highly rated and specialized for Mac as it has 99.8 % accuracy.
  • Accuracy is excellent and it is one of the best in the market.
  • It converts the scan to lot of different formats including Epub, Excel, Powerpoint etc.
  • It is quite slow but the results are worth to wait.
  • But it only works on OS X10.6.

Prizmo ($24.99) OS X 10.10 and higher version:

prizmo ocr for mac

  • It can be decent alternative for ABBYY Finereader Pro .
  • Recently Prizmo has been updated with the Yosmite Style interdface.
  • It requires OS X 10.10 or higher than that.
  • But scanning the document which is not in English is quite difficult although it supports multi language usage.
  • If you want to scan magazine articles, they should be more than 200 dpi.

OCRKit ($39.99) – OS X 10.0.6 or  higher version:
OCRKit

  • It is very effective tool for scanning needs.
  • The scanning capacity is highly good, no matter how damaged the document is.
  • You can drag the finished OCR document into Pages and make further editing.
  • It is very much cheaper than any other paid OCR apps and effective too.

PDFPen ($74.99) – OS X 10.7 and higher version:
pdfpen ocr for mac

  • It is a PDF conversion tool and also offer very simple and effective OCR feature.
  • It has “Deskew” and “Adjust image” tool to straighten the images.
  • But it cannot handle the pages more than 20 pages.
  • It is extremely fast than other OCR software and we can regularly convert PDF documents.

DEVONthink Pro Office ($169.95) – OS X 10.6.8 and higher version:
devonthink pro office

  • It is a professional OCR solution aimed to company needs.
  • It will suit well for small businesses that don’t need many piles of paper.
  • Anything uploaded into this app is automatically scanned.
  • It is best option for business that needs to OCR thousands of documents.

Readiris Pro ($129.99) – OS X 10 and higher version:
readiris pro mac

  • It was first developed for Windows but now it is available for Mac too.
  • It can scan 130 different languages when the original document is clear.
  • It can convert scanned documents, pictures, images and PDF’s.
  • It is limited to 50 pages at once.
  • If you have text over a background then it is a little struggle to recognize those texts.

VueScan ($39.95) – OS X 10.5 and higher version

vuescan

  • It can work virtually with all scanners.
  • It has basic OCR tool that can work with multiple languages.
  • It will not actually make the text scannable.
  • It will simply allow you to scan image with text in a page but we need dedicated OCR software.

About The Author

1 thought on “OCR for Mac – 12 Best Apps to Covert Scanned Documents, Images Into Text”

  1. Thanks for your suggestions. They are helpful for me. Simple OCR looks cool because it can recognize handwriting. When choosing OCR software, I always think about the recognition accuracy and recognition speed. As I know, Yunmai Technology is also very professional on OCR technology. Yunmai Document Recognition is really great for me. The average time for recognition of a document less than 6 seconds. The recognition accuracy can reach 99%. It can convert documents into PDF, Word, Text format files.

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