Introduction

Visual content gets significantly more views than plain text. According to WebFX, visual content is around 94% more likely to be noticed. Among these visuals, images play a vital role — from infographics to charts, and handwritten notes to scanned documents.

As an internet user, think about how often an image provides you with essential information. Probably quite often, right? But what happens when you need to extract text from those images? Do you write it all down manually?

What if the image is blurry? Or is the text handwritten and difficult to read? People face these common issues when trying to pull text from photos. That’s why we’re here — to provide you with simple and effective methods to extract and copy text from images, no matter the format or quality.

Ways to Extract and Copy Text from Photos

There are numerous methods available for extracting and copying text from images, each with its own strengths and limitations. Based on factors like accuracy and ease of use, we’ll guide you through a few of the most effective options:

Image to Text Converter
Google Drive & Docs
Google Lens

Now, let’s explore how to use each of these tools step by step.

1. Image to Text Converter

Image to text converter is an OCR (optical character recognition) powered tool. This is the technology that emerged between the 1960s and 1970s, initially designed for reading fonts, alphabets, or numbers. Whether handwritten or machine-written. Today, this technology is polished enough that it extracts texts even from a sort of blurry image with ease.

Here’s how you can extract text from your photos using an image-to-text converter.

Step 1: Upload Images

Visit the Image to text converter tool and submit your images. You can upload images in several easy ways—whether by copy/paste, drag-and-drop, or manual upload, as shown in the image below.

You can upload up to five images at once, with each file no larger than 1 MB. If the photo from which you want to copy the text is available online, you can also insert its link for further processing. For demonstration purposes, we have uploaded some photos (old yellowish book pages) to the tool. Here’s what it looks like once the upload is completed.

Step 2: Initiate Conversion

After uploading your images, click the “Convert Image to Text” button at the bottom center. Then, sit back and wait for a few seconds while the tool processes your images. Once the tool successfully extracts the text, it directs you to the outbox right below the input box. Here’s how it looks in our example.

Step 3: Copy or Save Extracted Text

Take a look at the output box displayed earlier. Here, you can easily copy the extracted text from your photos, either individually for each image or all at once. Image to text converter also lets you save this text in various formats, i.e., PDF, DOC, and TXT. To save the text, click the download icon in the top-right corner of your image result and select your preferred file format.

2. Google Drive

Google Drive, along with Docs, can also be used to extract and copy text from photos. However, there is a limitation to this method that we would like to mention here: “Using this method, you can only process one photo at a time”.

First, you have to upload your photos to Google Drive. Once uploaded, right-click on the image and then open it with Google Docs.

Upon doing this, a new document will open with the picture you provided at the top and the text extracted at the bottom.

3. Google Lens

Google Lens is another useful tool for copying text from photos. While it was initially limited to smartphones, it’s now accessible via web browsers as well. To extract text with Google Lens, just open your browser and click the camera icon in the search bar.

Upon clicking, it will provide you with different options to submit your image, including:

Manual upload
Drag and drop
Link insertion

Once you upload a photo to the tool, a new window will appear displaying your image along with several related images.

Here’s what you have to do to copy text inside your image:

Click on your image > Select all > Copy.

The extracted text will also appear in the search bar, allowing you to copy it from there as well.

Like Google Drive, this method also has a limitation – only one photo at a time.

Method Comparison

Below we have provided a side-by-side comparison of all three methods discussed above. Going through it will help you in choosing a method that best suits you.

Functionality	Image to Text Converter	Google Drive	Google Lens
Batch Processing	Yes	No	No
Support Downloading	Yes	Yes	No
Accuracy	High	Moderate	Moderate
Blurry Text Extraction	Handles Smoothly	Struggle & impact accuracy	Struggle & impact accuracy
Handwritten Text Extraction	Good accuracy	Moderate	Struggle to detect

If you need to extract text from multiple photos or from images that are blurry or contain handwritten content, an image-to-text converter is your best choice. However, if you’re working with a single digital image, like a quote from social media, Google Lens should be more than sufficient.

Final Thoughts

Extracting and copying text from photos doesn’t have to be complicated. Whether you’re dealing with multiple images, blurry content, or handwritten notes, there’s a perfect tool for every need. From Image-to-Text Converters for batch processing to Google Drive & Docs and Google Lens for simpler tasks, these methods make it easier than ever to extract and copy text from photos. Pick the tool that aligns with your needs and start extracting text from your images today!

Quiz Result
Total Questions	Correct Answers	Wrong Answers	Percentage

Introduction