OCR PDF and Extract Text from PDF in Python

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology plays a pivotal role in digitizing printed, scanned, or handwritten text from various sources, including PDF documents. In this blog post, we will learn how to OCR PDF documents and extract text from PDF in Python.

This article covers the following topics:

  1. PDF to TXT Python OCR API
  2. OCR PDF and Extract Text from PDF
  3. Save Scanned PDF to Text
  4. Free Learning Resources

PDF to TXT - Python OCR API

We will use the Aspose.OCR for Python to perform OCR on PDF documents and extract text from PDFs. Aspose.OCR for Python is a powerful optical character recognition (OCR) API that can recognize text from scanned images, smartphone photos, screenshots, and areas of images. The API returns recognized text results in the most popular document and data exchange formats, including PDF, XML, JSON, and plain text.

In addition to converting images to text, Aspose.OCR for Python can also create searchable PDFs based on scans. The API can also autocorrect spelling mistakes in recognized texts, making it ideal for a variety of applications.

Please download the package or install the API from PyPI using the following pip command in the console:

pip install aspose-ocr-python-net

Python OCR PDF - Extract Text from PDF in Python

We can perform OCR on PDF documents and extract the recognized text by following the steps given below:

  1. Create an instance of the AsposeOcr class.
  2. Initialize an object of the DocumentRecognitionSettings class.
  3. Add PDF file to the recognition batch.
  4. After that, call the recognize() method.
  5. Finally, show the identified text using the RecognitionResult class.

The following sample code shows how to OCR PDF documents and extract text from PDF in Python.

Python OCR PDF - Save Scanned PDF to Text in Python

We can perform OCR on PDF documents and save the recognized text by following the steps given below:

  1. Create an instance of the AsposeOcr class.
  2. Initialize an object of the DocumentRecognitionSettings class.
  3. Add PDF file to the recognition batch.
  4. After that, call the recognize() method.
  5. Finally, save the text using the save_multipage_document() method. It takes the output file path, the SaveFormat and RecognitionResult object as arguments.

The following sample code shows how to OCR PDF documents and save the recognized text in Python.

Get a Free Evaluation License

You can get a free temporary license to try the library without evaluation limitations.

Python OCR PDF - Free Resources

You may further explore the following resources to learn the Python OCR API:

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to perform OCR on PDF documents and extract text from PDF in Python. The ability to extract text from PDFs using OCR is a game-changer in numerous industries, from archiving and legal documentation to data analysis and content digitization. By leveraging Aspose.OCR for Python, developers and enthusiasts can seamlessly integrate OCR capabilities into their Python projects. In case of any ambiguity, please feel free to contact us on our free support forum.

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