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Photoshop Plugin that read text on images.


Marcelo N said:
Hello there!

Does anybody know if there is a plugin that makes my CS6 read the text inside an image?

Thanks in advance.

Marcelo N
Click to expand...
Hi @Marcelo N
There are a few approaches yet there are downsides with each.
1)
  • An extension/script for Photoshop (and Illustrator) that can perform text recognition (OCR) on an image layer.
  • It works by connecting to a cloud OCR service like Google Cloud Vision API and can attempt to place the extracted text back into your Photoshop project as editable text.
  • This is one of the few actual OCR-capable plugins made specifically for Photoshop/Illustrator workflows.

Unfortunately, the cloud service costs money. I have not used this approach or service

2) Using a Photoshop script that accesses external OCR engines (seems complex to me)

3) Use software outside of Photoshop, such as Adobe Acrobat Pro, which does a pretty good OCR job.

The above is for when you have quite a bit of OCR work to do to make it worthwhile to invest in the learning curve and the cost of the above approaches.
If you need only a few elements of text to OCR, there are apps where you select the text on your monitor, and it will do the OCR and put it into your clipboard for easy pasting into a text layer. For my MacBook Pro, I use the app "Textsnipper." and have found it works quite well. I am sure Windows machines have an equivalent app, yet TextSnipper was only developed for the Mac.

Hope these ideas help some.
John Wheeler
 
thebestcpu said:
Hi @Marcelo N
There are a few approaches yet there are downsides with each.
1)
  • An extension/script for Photoshop (and Illustrator) that can perform text recognition (OCR) on an image layer.
  • It works by connecting to a cloud OCR service like Google Cloud Vision API and can attempt to place the extracted text back into your Photoshop project as editable text.
  • This is one of the few actual OCR-capable plugins made specifically for Photoshop/Illustrator workflows.

Unfortunately, the cloud service costs money. I have not used this approach or service

2) Using a Photoshop script that accesses external OCR engines (seems complex to me)

3) Use software outside of Photoshop, such as Adobe Acrobat Pro, which does a pretty good OCR job.

The above is for when you have quite a bit of OCR work to do to make it worthwhile to invest in the learning curve and the cost of the above approaches.
If you need only a few elements of text to OCR, there are apps where you select the text on your monitor, and it will do the OCR and put it into your clipboard for easy pasting into a text layer. For my MacBook Pro, I use the app "Textsnipper." and have found it works quite well. I am sure Windows machines have an equivalent app, yet TextSnipper was only developed for the Mac.

Hope these ideas help some.
John Wheeler
Click to expand...
Thank you very much John Wheeler !!!
 
thebestcpu said:
If you need only a few elements of text to OCR, there are apps where you select the text on your monitor, and it will do the OCR and put it into your clipboard for easy pasting into a text layer. For my MacBook Pro, I use the app "Textsnipper." and have found it works quite well. I am sure Windows machines have an equivalent app, yet TextSnipper was only developed for the Mac.
Click to expand...
Don't MacOS has built in Live text feature? 1,2 How is Textsnipper different?
For windows you dont need any external tool,
Open the image with Edge/Chrome and do a Visual search/Google lens and it will let you select and copy the text.
 
Akshat said:
Don't MacOS has built in Live text feature? 1,2 How is Textsnipper different?
For windows you dont need any external tool,
Open the image with Edge/Chrome and do a Visual search/Google lens and it will let you select and copy the text.
Click to expand...
Very good question @Akshat

Yes, Macs from, I believe, macOS Monterey and beyond have Live Text that, in a number of applications, you can select (paint over) text and paste it where you want.

It is not universal across all applications nor across everything on the monitor, which is the key limitation:
Where Live Text DOES NOT work
❌ You cannot select text directly from:
  • Photoshop canvas
  • Lightroom
  • Most third-party apps
  • Arbitrary screen areas
  • Your desktop background
  • Video (except paused video in Photos or Safari
It’s not a universal screen OCR layer.

I have not investigated its abilities recently to see if it is more universal yet; that is my understanding of the difference between Live Text on a Mac and using TextSnipper anywhere the monitor is displaying text in any application. That makes it a bit more productive than extracting the image and placing that piece of image in an application in which Live Text does work.

That is just my understanding of the differences, so I am open to input from anyone who has a deeper understanding.
I hope that answers why I have been using Textsnipper vs Live Text.
John Wheeler
 
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