The best way to convert image to text on my computer?

If you have Microsoft Office, OneNote has excellent built-in OCR. Paste a screenshot into a page, right-click the image, and select "Copy Text from Picture". This will convert image to text as expected.

Windows PowerToys Text Extractor works anywhere on screen for converting image to text. It  is a system-wide OCR (Optical Character Recognition) tool that allows you to quickly capture text from any part of your screen whether it's in a video, an image, a PDF, a dialog box, or even a game and copy it to your clipboard.

1. Open PowerToys Image to Text Converter (you can search for it in your Start Menu). Navigate to Text Extractor in the left-hand sidebar.
2. Toggle the "Enable Text Extractor" switch to On.
3. The default activation shortcut is Win + Shift + T. You can change this shortcut in the PowerToys settings to anything you prefer.
4. Display the content you want to extract text from (e.g., a picture, a video paused on a frame, a PDF document).
5. Press the keyboard shortcut: Win + Shift + T. Your cursor will change to a crosshair.
6. Click and drag to draw a rectangle around the text you want to capture.
7. Release the mouse button.

That's it! The OCR engine will process the selected area, and the extracted text will be automatically copied to your clipboard. It is a totally free way to convert image to text on Windows 11 and Windows 10.

When setting up free offline OCR solutions on Windows 10 for accurate batch image to text conversion (especially with English and German, and aiming to preserve tables), there are several common pitfalls and errors to watch out for:

1.Issue: Poor quality, skewed, or noisy images lead to low OCR accuracy.
   Solution: Always pre-process images:
   Deskew images using tools like ImageMegick.
   Enhance contrast and brightness.
   Denoise images.

2. Issue: Not installing or specifying the correct language packs (deu, eng) results in poor recognition.
    Solution: About image to text, ensure you download and install the correct language data files for Tesseract or OCRmyPDF.

3. Issue: Not including both eng and deu in the OCR command can limit recognition.
    Solution: Use -l eng+deu (or --language eng+deu) to recognize both languages simultaneously.

If you want to convert image to text. OCRmyPDF on Windows 10 — a free, powerful, and accurate solution for multi-language OCR, batch processing, and preserving layout/tables. It requires WSL setup but is well worth the effort for quality results.

Advantages:

• Accurate OCR for multiple languages, including English and German.
• Batch processing capability via scripting.
• Preserves layout and tables better than plain text OCR.
• Converts images to text directly or searchable PDFs, which maintains formatting and structure.
• Free and open-source.

Considerations:

• OCRmyPDF runs natively on Linux but can be used on Windows via Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
• Requires some setup, including installing WSL, Python, and OCRmyPDF.
• For best results, you'll want to convert images to PDFs first, then run OCR.

You can use online collaborative whiteboard tool like Miro. They are designed for teams to brainstorm, plan, and work visually. It's widely used for workshops, agile ceremonies, mind mapping, product design, and remote collaboration. The workspace is an infinite canvas where users can add sticky notes, shapes, images, diagrams, and even integrate with tools like Slack, Jira, or Google Drive.

One of Miro's underrated features is its OCR for sticky notes and uploaded images and it can used as an effective image to text converter across different platforms.

Step 1 : You can drag an image (like a photo of a whiteboard or screenshot) into Miro.

Step 2: Use the Sticky Note Capture feature → Miro detects handwriting or typed text and converts it into editable sticky notes.

Step 3: The recognized text can then be copied, rearranged, or exported.

This is especially useful for converting image to text if you've taken a photo of physical brainstorming sessions or meeting notes—you don’t need to manually retype them.

Pros:

• Great for turning messy photos of whiteboards or sticky notes into clean, editable text.
• Collaborative: team members can instantly edit and refine the captured notes.
• Cloud-based: no installation needed beyond a browser.
•  

Cons:

• Requires an internet connection.
• OCR accuracy varies with handwriting clarity.
• Free plan limits some advanced features and board exports.

Adobe Acrobat Reader (the free version) can handle images embedded in PDFs. If you scan an image or convert your picture into a PDF, Acrobat can run its OCR engine to convert image to text. In Acrobat Reader DC, this feature is labeled “Recognize Text” or sometimes appears when you use editing/copy tools.

The OCR engine analyzes the pixels, detects characters, and overlays selectable text on top of the image. This allows you to copy, search, or export the recognized text.

1. Open Acrobat Reader → File → Create → PDF from File → choose your image (JPG, PNG, TIFF, etc.).

2. Go to Tools → Scan & OCR.

3. Choose Recognize Text → In This File.

4. Select page range if needed and choose the OCR language.

5. After OCR finishes, the text becomes selectable.

6. You can highlight, right-click, and choose Copy with Formatting. Or go to File → Export To → Microsoft Word / Text for a full export. This will convert the image into text very quickly.

As you can see, Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of the best image to text converter apps you can use on a PC and Mac.

If you are looking for guidance on converting images to text on Windows 10 PC. How about the Tesseract OCR with a batch processing tool:

Pros: Tesseract is a powerful, open-source OCR engine. Its accuracy is quite good for many image types, and it's available for Windows. Batch processing can be achieved with scripting languages like Python or command-line tools. You can often improve results with pre-processing steps for your images.

Cons: Tesseract by itself doesn't handle tables well. Post-processing with Python (or other) scripts is needed to extract and format tables. Mixed languages can still cause issues if the language models aren't optimal for the specific documents. You'll need to install Tesseract and potentially language data packs. Requires some technical expertise.

Recommendation: How to convert images to text? Use Tesseract OCR combined with a Python script (using libraries like pytesseract and potentially pandas for table extraction). This provides the most flexibility and potential for accuracy.