Best Open Source OCR Software

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition is a technology that is used to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files, or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data. We can also say that it is the electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten, or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is a very useful technology, you can utilize this OCR technology in the form of data entry from printed data records such as computerized receipts, business cards, passport documents, bank statements, invoices,s or any other documentation.

OCR software is very useful when you need to edit some extra information or anything in scan documents. Open source OCR has benefit is little more because it's free of cost and another major benefit is open-source OCR software's source code is available you can change some functions according to your needs. Let's see some of the best open source Optical Character Recognition software solutions.

Tesseract
Tesseract is an excellent open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software solution. It is has been improved and maintained by Google. It is designed to support multiple platforms like Linux, Windows, and OS X. It is supported in 60 different languages. It has been released under the Apache License 2.0. It is a little complicated in terms of use but it produced very accurate results. It provides a number of features to their user some of these are used static classifier outline fragments, recognize broken characters, fully Unicode (UTF-8) capable, used UNLV regression test framework, and many more.

Download link: https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/downloads/list

GOCR
GOCR is another open-source Optical Character Recognition software solution. It is released under the GNU Public License. It is supported multiple platforms like Linux, Windows, and OS/2. GOCR very beautifully converts the scanned images of text back to text files, it also recognizes the letters and numbers contained in an image file. It is not only for recognizing the character but also enables you to convert them so as to become editable using any text processing application. GOCR can read pnm, PBM, PGM, ppm, some PCX, and the image files. It generates very accurate results but it also difficult in terms of use.

Download link: http://jocr.sourceforge.net/download.html

CuneiForm
CuneiForm is an open-source user-friendly Optical Character Recognition software solution. Originally it was released as commercial OCR after a few years later it released as freeware on December 12, 2007. Now it is available under the open-source BSD license. It is supported in multiple languages and supported cross-platform. This application is very easy to use as compare to Tesseract and GOCR. It enables you to upload images from a local folder or from a scanning device. It also supported the different types of image formats like JPG, BMP, or PNG. It has the ability to recognize tables of different structures and different types of fonts. It included the features of dictionary verification to enhance the accuracy of recognition.

Download link: http://www.brothersoft.com/cuneiform-ocr-pro-9982.html