ocr

How to search scanned documents in your Notes app

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Search scans on your iPhone in Notes app.
Search scans on your iPhone in Notes app.
Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Cult of Mac

Did you know that you can scan paper documents into the Notes app on your iPhone and iPad? The app turns them into PDFs, and trims them to make them look as if you scanned them in a proper scanner. Maybe you read our how-to article on scanning into the Notes app, and you already know this. But in iOS 13, things get better: You also can search those scanned documents.

That’s right. You can scan a sheet of paper into Notes, and anything printed on it will become searchable, as if you typed it in yourself. Let’s see how to search scans.

Scan text into your computer or phone, Star Trek-style [Deals]

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Scanmarker AIr

Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

Digital documents and cloud storage have been great for note-takers. The information is available anywhere there’s an internet connection, so there’s no risk of losing your notes or leaving them at home. But when it comes to books, digital capture means either transcribing the page or taking a picture of it. Not so with this futuristic text scanner.

GoodNotes 4 is the paper notebook of the future [50 Essential iOS Apps #24]

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GoodNotes 4 notebook with Apple Pencil on iPad Pro
GoodNotes 4 is perfect for writing notes, regardless of the topic.
Photo: Ian Fuchs/Cult of Mac

50 Essential iOS Apps: GoodNotes 4 The iPad has become a workhorse in the last few years. Since the introduction of the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, the transition from pen and paper to digital note-taking is more feasible than ever. GoodNotes 4 is one of the best digital note-taking and document-annotation apps available on iOS.

How to extract text from JPEG screenshots on iPhone

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scanner
Scanning screenshots doesn't have to involve a ruined Christmas.
Photo: Daniel M. Hendricks/Flickr CC

Did you ever snap a photo of a magazine page, or capture a screenshot of text, and wish you could just copy and paste it like any normal text? Maybe it’s a photo of a recipe from a paper book, and you’d like to be able to search for it in future? The good news is that you can easily extract the text from a photo or screenshot, right there on your iPhone.

The even better news is that we’re going to learn how to do it right now.

Easily edit any scanned documents with this power app [Deals]

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Prizmo
Prizmo 3 makes editing scanned documents a snap.
Photo: Cult of Mac Deals

If you’ve ever had to edit a scanned document, you’ll know how time-consuming and painstaking this can be. And you’ll appreciate how easy the Prizmo 3 scanning app makes the process. Just download this app onto any image capturing device (a smartphone or camera, for instance), then quickly scan and edit any document to your heart’s content. You can currently get Prizmo 3 for just $29.99 through Cult of Mac Deals.

This magic math app is like having Stephen Hawking on your iPhone

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Photo: PhotoMath
Photo: PhotoMath

Here’s a confession: I was terrible at math in school. From Algebra 1 on, I just couldn’t keep the various symbols, numbers, and denominators I was faced with straight, and so I flunked pretty much every test.

But I grew up in the 90’s. If I was in high school today, I’d never fail a math test again. I’d use the new iOS app PhotoMath instead, which literally solves math problems like magic.

Pixter, A Fast, Accurate And Good-Looking OCR App For iPhone

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A few months back, I spent far too many hours trying to find an app which would scan a page of text and turn into actual, editable text. I found none. Or rather, I found nothing good. There are plenty of OCR (optical character recognition) apps in the store, but they were either inaccurate, or ugly, or (most often) both.

And while Evernote is excellent at letting you search on scanned pages and even your handwritten notes, you don’t get to touch the text itself.

I gave up, and now – as usually happens with my “urgent” research projects, I’ve forgotten why I needed it on the first place. Which is a shame, as Pixter Scanner has been launched,and it is quite excellent – with one huge annoyance, for me at least.

Doo May Be Awkwardly Named, But It Should Make Your Paperless Life Just A Bit Easier

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Did they have to name it the
Did they have to name it the "doo Cloud?"

Going paperless is a goal of mine. I’d love to be able to keep all my important documents, like banking paperwork and medical records, all safely and cleanly tucked away into the digital ether. And, while productivity apps are fairly common in the Mac App store, when Apple made document-organizing app, doo, an Editor’s Choice app this week, well, it certainly piqued my interest.

Doxie One Scanner: Just Go Buy It Already [Review]

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I thought I had the whole “paperless” thing under control until Doxie sent over the new, budget-priced Doxie One for me to review. Trust me: If you snap photos of your receipts with your iPhone in an attempt to banish dead trees from your life, you should probably switch to a portable scanner.

It really is that much better.

Office Drop Cloud OCR Comes To The Mac

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Office Drop is kind of like a mission-specific Dropbox. It comes with Mac and iOS clients, and lets you upload and share your various documents between them. However, it has one big stinking extra which could be amazingly useful to some people: It performs automatic OCR (optical character recognition) on your stored documents.

Easily Scan And Convert Paper Documents With Quick Reader [iOS Tips]

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QuickReader

These days, most of us are caught in an odd transition from paper to digital documents. Most of us create documents on our Macs, but also need to deal with a ton of actual dead-tree paperwork on a daily basis.

There are a bunch of optical character recognition (OCR) apps out there for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad of varying quality and interface design. Quick Reader is one of the less expensive ones, at $0.99, so might be worth a try if your budget is tight.

The Best Document Scanners [Best Of]

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There are two ways to deal with paper documents. Fire, or... scanners.
There are two ways to deal with paper documents. Fire, or... scanners.

Even in 2012, people still insist on giving us paper: bills, receipts, even business cards (!) all come printed on dead treeware, and all remain completely useless, unsearchable and easy to lose. What you need, until these people wake up and just e-mail you the relevant info — is a document scanner. Smaller and faster than all-in-one or flatbed models, these scanners can take a stack of paper and turn it into searchable PDFs faster than you can shred the source material.

Read on for our list of the best document scanners to use with your Mac, iPad or iPhone.

Head Confidently Back To School With IRISNotes 2 Digital Pens

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IrisPen

Hey, everyone, it’s Back To School time, and students everywhere will need to take part in a time honored tradition – taking notes. IRIS, originally an OCR software company, announced today the availability of two new digital note taking pens that will take handwritten notes and turn them into editable text. The IRISNotes2 Express and Executive pens will fit different needs and budgets, but should prove a boon to anyone – especially students – who need to take fast notes and then get them into a digital format.

Two Free Ways To Make Your PDF Files Editable [OS X Tips]

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Great options for free PDF document conversion.
Great options for free PDF document conversion.

PDF files are pretty much just pictures of documents. In point of fact, many of them are just that – scanned paper documents that are put into the PDF format, as it’s a fairly common one with free tools on all platforms. But what if you want to edit those PDF files? Or save them in a format that makes them easier to manage, like .doc or .docx files? There are many expensive options, like the fantastic Abbyy Fine Reader Express, available in the Mac App Store, but there are also two free, relatively painless ways to do this as well. Here’s how.

IRIScan ‘Mobile’ Scanner Scans Like It’s 1995

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This is a thing you can actually buy. Really.

 

If there was ever a company mired in Microsoftian corporate nonsense, it’s IRIS, the scanning and OCR company. Clunky, ugly and ridiculously overpriced software combined with hideous hardware, and a lame bird-based logo to boot – if IRIS were a human, it would be a taste-free middle-manager from the early 1990s.

The latest example is the IRIScan Book 2, a scanner which you have to drag over each sheet of paper by hand in order to digitize the letters thereon.

SkimClip OCRs Mac Screen-Grabs For Storage And Searching

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SkimClip reads the text from your Mac screenshots.

SkimClip is a very clever, and very handy little Mac app. What it does it this: With one keystroke, you can make a screen grab of any part of your Mac’s desktop and SkimClip saves it and performs OCR.

Thus, any image containing text is instantly cataloged for searching. Sure, you could also roll your own PDF workflow to do the same thing, but as SkimClip also organizes the results into an iTunes-like interface with search, subcategories and quick-look, and only costs $5 on the Mac App Store, then why bother?

Plus, this is yet another way to convert DRM-encumbered e-books into plain old go-anywhere text.

SkimClip v1.0 is available now in the Mac App Store.

Source: Dom Loves Kim Software

The Neat Company Is Putting Paperless in the Cloud [Macworld / iWorld 2012]

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Neat Cloud and Mobile

SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD / IWORLD 2012 — The Neat Company has long been known for its scanning devices, like NeatReceipts and NeatDesk. Those devices let you take your paper receipts, documents and business cards and scan them into your Mac so that you can organize them in a way that makes sense to you.

But here at Macworld/iWorld 2012, The Neat Company is focusing on their latest venture: conquering the digital realm. The thrust of what they are presenting here is all about the cloud. NeatCloud and NeatMobile, to be specific.

Get Mac App Prizmo for 40% Off & Turn Your Images Into Searchable Documents [Deals]

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prizmo

This week Cult of Mac Deals took the deals hub to the next level and pumped out two great deals for our readers. Because everyone was so enthusiastic about the Fall 2011 Mac SuperBundle that we announced yesterday, we wanted to remind you that we’ll still be carrying the Prizmo deal for another four days. Ever thought about getting a scanner, but held back because of size and cost? Do you have a Mac and a digital camera? Then good news! Prizmo for Mac offers a great solution to accomplish your scanning needs without the extra hardware. So, what can Prizmo do for you?