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How Do I Copy Text Which Is In a Picture?

Is there any way I can copy text from a picture which has been placed on a Word document? The copy I want must be editable by either Word or Pages. Thanks.
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Mike T

Comments: 3 Responses to “How Do I Copy Text Which Is In a Picture?”

    3 years ago

    So this is text that happens to be visible inside a digital image? Like a photo or scan of a sign, card or document?

    You can't select the text and copy it because it isn't text. It is just pixels in the image, like a landscape or person's face. The computer doesn't see it as text, just colored pixels.

    You would need to use an OCR app to process the image. How much text are we talking about? If it is just a few words or sentences, even paragraphs, then it is probably quicker to just type it out. Otherwise, an OCR app is usually used to process multiple pages of images, like a scanned contract or book.

    You can find OCR apps in the Mac App Store. One trick though is to use Google Docs which has OCR built it. It is handy for maybe a single page or two. I have a tutorial on this here: https://macmost.com/using-google-docs-to-convert-scans-to-text.html

    You may need to play around with how you get the images into a Google Doc. For instance, you could try uploading the Word file, or maybe copying and pasting that image into a new Doc.

    Michael T
    3 years ago

    Thank you Gary. I will probably just copy the text but will likely also go onto the tutorial.

    Jesse the K
    3 years ago

    Seeing AI is a free app that allows blind users to be beta testers for Microsoft’s computer vision project.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/seeing-ai/id999062298

    It can read the text in an image (along with many other visual tasks — bar codes, money ID, color ID and scene descriptions). Not always accurate, but OCR is v good

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