1. Steps to OCR PDF and Image Files on Mac. As Cisdem's mac ocr tool offers free trial with full features, here we will take Cisdem PDF Converter OCR, the most affordable and efficient way as a demonstration to OCR a PDF on mac. Launch Cisdem PDF OCR Program for Mac. Download Cisdem PDF Converter OCR and then install it on Mac. Optical Character.
2. Compatibility: Windows and Mac. Free Online OCR. Sometimes we have no time to download software. Don't worry because online OCR websites, such as Free Online OCR, can help you. As the name stated, Free Online OCR is a free OCR software you can access through a browser. It is as simple as it gets.

Sometimes, we need to extract the content from the scanned PDF files to text, and that's when PDF to text OCR functionality comes in very handy. OCR acronym for Optical Character Recognition. Many PDF programs come with the OCR feature, which makes scanned PDF documents searchable and editable.

If it's your very first time looking for the best free PDF OCR solution out there, we can understand how challenging it can be. But no worries!! This post will introduce the top free PDF OCR tools and how to OCR a PDF on Windows and Mac.

Best Free PDF OCR Software for Windows and Mac

There is abundant third-party software on Windows and Mac. Come and find the best tool for you to OCR a PDF.

Arabic ocr for mac free download. Tesseract OCR Tesseract is an open source OCR or optical character recognition engine and command line program. Softworks OCR is also available for Windows and Mac operating systems with a 30-day free trial period, so you can try the software first to see if it works for you. However, one con is that you cannot scan large documents or books because of their limitation in size.

EaseUS PDF Editor

EaseUS PDF Editor is an excellent PDF OCR software. This program can recognize and convert image-based PDF to an editable format and accurately detect and convert as many as 29 languages, such as English, French, German, Japanese, etc.

What's more, this Windows PDF editor enables you to edit and manage your PDF files like below:

• Insert, delete, reorder, extract, crop, or rotate PDF pages with ease
• Add comment, lines, or highlight PDF documents
• Add or remove password from PDF
• Sign your PDF effortlessly

Want to explore more information? Just click the below button to get it. And there is a tutorial that guides you to OCR a PDF using this tool, and you can follow it to use the OCR feature easily.

Step 1. Click Create and choose From file from the top left corner

If you want to OCR from an existing PDF file, click from the File option on the top left corner to start the process.

Step 2. Click OCR on the toolbar

After clicking OCR on the menu, select the language, then wait for a couple of seconds.

Step 3. Edit your PDF as you wish

You can use crop, rotate, combine, etc. features according to your needs. There are several features, and it allows you to manage this process easily and effortlessly.

Step 4. Click Save to keep the changes

When you are finished with editing, click save to keep the changes. You can also click save as and type a new file name if you want to keep the old version unchanged.

Adobe Acrobat DC

With its OCR functionality, you can easily convert your scanned PDFs or images into editable and searchable documents. It can perform OCR on PDFs that contain vector art, images, hidden text, or a blend of these elements.

Above all, the OCR tool in Adobe Acrobat DC offers many editing features, including text recognition, combining files, adding comments, and more.

Pros:

• Support cutting and pasting the text into other apps
• Work with many languages
• Accurately match fonts
• A free trial is available

Cons:

• Lots of features can overwhelm beginners

URL: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/how-to/ocr-software-convert-pdf-to-text.html

PDF OCR X

You can also count on PDF OCR X to help you convert scanned PDF documents into searchable PDFs or text documents with ease. It comes with advanced OCR functionality to extract the text from PDFs, even if it is in an image.

Above all, this PDF OCR-free solution is exclusively designed to handle PDFs created using a scan-to-PDF tool.

Pros:

• Drag and drop functionality to upload documents
• Able to convert PDFs to both text or searchable PDFs
• Support JPEG, PNG, BMP, and more image formats
• Support more than 60 languages

Cons:

• Lack editing features

URL: https://solutions.weblite.ca/pdfocrx/index.php

Readiris

When looking for a PDF to Word OCR solution, Readris serves the purpose best. Supporting both Windows and Mac, the tool can convert PDFs, texts, and images in a scanned document to modify in the format of your preference, including Word.

Its new added features such as a new recognition engine, new user interface, and faster document management make it even more remarkable as a PDF OCR solution or even more.

Pros:

• Various editing features are available
• User-friendly interface
• Open files faster

Cons:

• Lack a forever-free version

URL: https://www.irislink.com/zh-Hans-chn/c1810/IRIS---The-World-leader-in-OCR--PDF-and-Portable-scanner.aspx?

PDFMate PDF Converter

PDFMate PDF Converter entails advanced OCR technology that can help you convert PDFs to editable documents without any hassle. You can extract images and text from image-based PDFs and convert them into selectable and editable text or work files.

Besides the OCR functionality, the software has so much to offer, such as merging and creating PDF, encrypted converted files, customizing layout, and more.

Pros:

• Convert scanned documents to editable ones with OCR
• Support converting PDF to TXT, DOC, and other formats
• Add permission password to documents
• Simple and easy to use

Cons:

• Some crash problems during conversion processes

URL: https://www.pdfmate.com/pdf-converter-free.html

Best 3 Free PDF OCR Online Tools

For those who aren't willing to download software on the computer, the online OCR tools in this section may be the best choices.

OnlineOCR.net

Suppose you don't want to install any program on your system for PDF to word OCR, no worries. With OnlineOCR.net, you can get the job done without installing any tool on your computer. It can recognize characters and text from scanned PDF and convert them into the editable doc format.

It is a completely free PDF OCR online service that even comes with a guest mode, which implies there is no need to register to use it.

Pros:

• Support converting scanned PDFs to editable DOC format
• Work even without registration
• Convert PDF to Word, text, or excel format
• Support many languages

Cons:

• Support file size maximum up to 15 MB

URL: https://www.onlineocr.net/

ABBYY FineReader Online

ABBYY FineReader Online is another online OCR tool designed to help scan and convert PDF documents into Word and many other editable formats. It even supports import and export documents to cloud storage services such as OneDrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox.

The tool will keep converted files in the cloud for around 14 days, giving you enough time to download and share your files during the period.

Pros:

• Support many input and output file formats
• Export a converted document to popular cloud storage services
• Easy to use
• Able to convert scanned PDF to text OCR

Cons:

• Require registration

URL: https://finereaderonline.com/en-us/Tasks/Create

PDF2Go

PDF2Go is also an amazing PDF OCR online tool you can use to convert scanned files to text so that you can edit with ease. You can drag and drop your file or upload it from cloud storage. With PDF2Go, you don't have to copy the text manually, as this PDF OCR free tool will handle this job for you.

Above all, it works with all web browsers out there.

Pros:

• Convert scanned documents to word with OCR
• Support both DOC & DOCX and text format
• Work on a smartphone as well
• No registration is required

Cons:

• Lack support for uploading a file from the OneDrive service

URL: https://www.pdf2go.com/pdf-to-word

How to OCR a PDF?

As mentioned above, we'll help you learn how to OCR a PDF on Windows and Mac, and it's time. We will use Adobe Acrobat DC to walk you through how to OCR a scanned PDF to have an editable copy of your document.

Step 1. In Adobe Acrobat for PC or Mac, open your scanned PDF file.

Step 2. Tap 'Edit PDF' in the right place. The Adobe Acrobat will automatically perform OCR to your file and make it editable.

Step 3. Tap the text element you would like to edit and begin typing.

Step 4. Finally, select 'File' > 'Save As' and enter a new name for your editable file.

Conclusion

That's all on PDF OCR free tools. We have covered tools that really help to OCR a PDF to word or text on Windows and Mac with ease.

It's time for you to make a selection. Our advice is to pick EaseUS PDF Editor to get the job done.

Free PDF OCR Solutions FAQs

If you still have problems with the PDF OCR feature, those FAQs may help you.

1. How to OCR my PDF to word?

For PDF to word OCR, all you need to do is upload your scanned PDF document and choose the output file format as Word/DOC/DOCX while using any PDF OCR tool.

2. How to OCR my PDF to editable text?

Like PDF to word OCR, you need to select an output file format as .txt while using any PDF OCR tool to PDF to text OCR.

3. How to OCR my PDF to Excel?

The best way to OCR your PDF to excel is to use an online OCR service like ABBYY FineReader Online. It will provide you with an option to choose '.xlsx' as your output format.

We are in the times when paperless office penetrating through our work, we use digitized files on a regular basis. However, there are great chances we need to further edit these non-editable or non-searchable files for different intentions. And OCR is applied to make these scanned files to be editable. For a Mac user, using the best OCR software for mac is often considered as the easiest way to do the OCR job.

Users’ Pick---The Most Affordable & Accurate OCR Software for Mac

You may have noticed that almost all OCR software comes with a relatively high price tag. Yes, OCR is never easy and cheap. But there is one just combines all the things you need, affordability, OCR accuracy and simplicity---Cisdem PDF Converter OCR.

Highlight of Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

• High OCR Accuracy: precisely recognize texts and keep original formatting;
• OCR files in 200+ language;
• Advanced OCR Settings: export specific parts of the file as Text, Image or Table;
• Do OCR on Protected PDFs: auto remove the owner-password protection and perform OCR;
• Batch and Fast OCR;
• Extended features: convert native PDFs, create PDFs from other documents, etc.;
• Low Price--- $59.99/lifetime license and 7/24 technical support;

Easy Step to Use the Best OCR Software for Mac

Step 1Download and install the free trial of Cisdem PDF Converter on Mac.

Drag and drop scaned or image documents into Converter interface.

Step 2Turn OCR button ON.

Choose page range, file language and output format.

(Optional) Use Advanced OCR

If you are not satisfied with current OCR result or you want high-quality OCR, you can click the settings icon to bring up the Advanced OCR interface. You will find all the contents are auto marked as texts, images or tables in different colors. For example, if you want to export a specific area as text, click on “Mark Texts” in the OCR applied zone, then drag a mark box to include the contents you want to mark as texts.

Full List of Top 12 OCR Software for Mac 2021

Do you have any clues about how to pick top OCR software for mac?

The OCR accuracy! And this is just what those free Mac OCR tools cannot guarantee for users. OCR accuracy refers to how much can the OCR software recognize from the files and how much can it maintain in term of formatting, layout, etc. The more it is capable of making the OCR output look the same as the original file, the higher accuracy it can bring, and the better it is.

And basing on this, we finally collect the following list of 12 best OCR software for mac in the year of 2020-2021, with high OCR accuracy.

• No.1 Adobe Acrobat DC

Not surprised that Adobe ranks as No.1, right? We all know the power of Adobe products, a great PDF tool to edit, create, and make interactive PDFs. You can even fill forms, sign, comment, and share, virtually everything you want to do on a PDF with Adobe Acrobat DC.

There is an automatic OCR engine in Adobe Acrobat DC, Acrobat automatically applies optical character recognition (OCR) to your document and converts it to a fully editable copy of your PDF. It also helps to turn scanned documents into searchable PDFs, export PDFs to Office and image formats.

Input format: PDF, Scans

Output format: PDF, Docx, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, Image(JPEG, TIFF, PNG), RTF, Postscript, Text, XML 1.0

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price: $14.99/month

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.2 ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac

ABBYY FineReader Pro is the OCR software combines exceptional OCR and document conversion quality with an intuitive interface. It can precisely recognize text and retain layout with a support of more than 180 languages. You can easily convert PDF to Word on mac, also output the files into various formats like TXT, XSLX, EPBU, HTML, PDF, etc. It also supports batch processing and Text-to-Speech, quite time saving and convenient for every user.

When processing images, the image editor will enable you to improving the quality by correcting brightness and contrast, straightening curved text lines, correcting trapezium distortions, reducing ISO noise and removing motion blur, spliting dual pages, cropping images, and so on.

Input format: PDF, Image(TIFF, JPEG, JPEG 2000, JBIG, JBIG2, GIF, PNG, BMP)

Output format: PDF, PDF/A, DOCX, RTF, XLSX, PPTX, ODT, HTML,TXT,CSV,EPUB,FBS

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$119.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.3 Cisdem PDF Converter OCR

PDF Converter OCR is an enhanced PDF OCR software designed to convert any PDF and images into searchable and editable files. It supports 16 output formats and 200+ languages. The batch conversion feature will save users a lot of time and efforts to deal with multiple scanned documents. With its easy-to-use interface and high quality OCR recognition, no more documents retyping and reformatting will be required.

What's more, this PDF OCR converter enables users to create PDF from many other documents, also protect/unprotect PDFs. Even, you can customize the PDF size and quality within this program.

Input formats: PDF, Image

Output formats: PDF, RTFD, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, PPTX, HTML, TEXT, EPUB, PAGES ,KEYNOTE,JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, and TIFF

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$59.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.4 Able2Extract Professional 16

Able2Extract Professional 16 is as powerful as Adobe Acrobat, building in all necessary features you will need to handle your PDF files: convert, create, edit, OCR, batch process, fill forms, compare, view, annotate, protect, sign, etc. It outperforms other OCR software in accuracy, even poor quality scanned files can be recognized accurately, because it offers a set of tools to correct skewed content, iron out grainy, turn broken text into smooth fonts…

Also, it does a great job on PDF to Excel conversion, by not only keeping original layout and style, but also customizing the column and row structure of the Excel output. The most impressive is, Able2Extract Pro is well trained to present the tables within a smart template, which makes your Excel output looks the same professional as the original.

While it is pitiful that Able2Extract understands 4 languages only: English, Spanish, French and German. For sure, most of us just need an English OCR, but if you need OCR files in minority languages, Able2Extract seems to be feature limited.

Input format: PDF and Scans

Output format: Docx, XLSX, PPTX, ePub, HTML, AutoCAD, Text, Searchable PDF, Image;

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: High

Price: $149.95

• No.5 Readiris Pro 17 Mac

Readiris Pro 17 Mac is an OCR software for Mac OS built to convert photos and scanned Images into editable formats including:DOCX/RTF/TXT/HTML/IMAGE. It will preserve the original formatting and easily back up your files in Drive/Box/iCloud/Evernote, etc. Particularly for PDF files, Readiris Pro 17 Mac allows users to create, add, merge, delete, edit, sign, and compress pages.

Input formats: JPG, GIF, PSD, PNG, TIFF, BMP, PDF, Scanned images (Image Capture) (TWAIN)

Output formats: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, ODT, ePub, RTF, HTML, TXT, TIFF, JPEG, PNG, MP3, WAV, etc

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: High

Price:$99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.6 Foxit PhantomPDF

Foxit PhantomPDF is a PDF tool with vast editing functionalities, you can edit texts and images in your PDF, also add, delete, extract, rotate PDF pages easily. Of course you can manage the PDFs by freely splitting or merging, create PDF, fill out PDF form, sign, protect and annotate PDFs . Foxit PhantomPDF for Mac also comes with a fast OCR technology to convert scanned PDF image, even scans to multiple formats like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and TXT.

Ocr For Mac Free Download

Input format: PDF, Image, Scans

Output format: PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, HTML and TXT

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$139

YouTube Video Tutorial

Affordable & Accurate Mac OCR

• OCR scanned & protected PDFs, images
• Output support: Searchable PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Keynote, Pages, ePub, etc.
• Batch, fast and accurate OCR
• Affordable Price $59.99/Lifetime
• OCR files in 200+ languages
• Extended features: convert and create PDFs

• No.7 Prizmo 4

Prizmo 4 is a scanning application with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in 23 languages. Prizmo can be used by everyone, thanks to its support of VoiceOver. Prizmo includes a specific processing depending on the type of document (text, business card, image) you want to process, you are also allowed to manually update or edit recognized information if you want to make some corrections. Even you can share files after OCR processing via iCloud, Evernote, Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, WebDAV.

Input format: JPEG, RAW, TIFF,PDF

Outformat: Prizmo Documents (.pzdoc), JPEG, TIFF, PNG, vCards, PDF, RTF, TXT

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$74.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.8 PDFPen

PDFPen is a versatile PDF tool to add signatures, text, and images, to make changes and correct typos, to fill out forms, also to perform OCR mac. As you can see, OCR is just one impressive feature among its versatilities. It can perform OCR on scanned documents, users are allowed to adjust resolution, color depth and contrast, skew and size of an image or scanned document, and also you can have quick edits with the context-sensitive popup-menus.

Input format: PDF and Image

Output format: Word, PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$74.95

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.9 PDF Element

PDFelement allows you to easily create, edit, annotate or convert your PDF files to other popular formats. PDFelement can detect whether a PDF file is scanned or just native, then make corresponding suggestions to initiate OCR. After OCR, it will open the new created PDF file in PDFelement automatically, then users can click 'EDIT' >'Edit Text' button to modify the text of the PDF file.

Input format:PDF

Output format: PDF, Excel, Docx, Powerpoint, Pages, Epub, RTF, TXT, HTML, Image

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Good

Price:$99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.10 OCR KIT Pro

OCR KIT Pro utilizes OCR technology to recognize the text in the graphic, it can convert any PDF or graphic file into searchable PDF,RTF,HTML and TXT by simple drag&drop the file into its interface. It supports 25 languages and automatic rotation of the file. Also, it builds in a setting interface to adjust the preferences for better OCR.

Input Format:PDF, TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, PNM, BMP, PCX, GIF as well as OpenEXR.

Output Format: PDF, HTML, RTFand TXT.

Batch OCR: No

OCR Accuracy: Medium

Price:€69.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.11 PDF OCR X

PDF OCR X is a simple drag-and-drop utility that convert scanned PDF to text or searchable PDF files. This is particularly useful for dealing with PDFs that were created via a Scan-to-PDF function in a scanner or photo copier. It also supports 60 languages and batch conversion.

Input format: GIF, JPG, PNG, BMP, and PICT,PDF

Output format: Text and Searchable PDF.

Batch OCR: Yes

OCR Accuracy: Medium

Price:$29.99

YouTube Video Tutorial

• No.12 Lighten PDF Converter OCR

Lighten PDF Converter OCR is a compact PDF tool to export PDF as Microsoft Office, iWork, images and more. Before conversion, it allows enabling OCR on scanned PDF files and supports batch OCR. Comparing with other OCR software, though it hasn’t been updated for some time, it has an excellent support on output format, not so many Mac OCR apps help directly convert PDF to Apple OS document formats: Keynote, Pages and Numbers, it does.

However, it can only recognize 10 languages: English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

Ocr For Mac Free

Input format:PDF

Output format:Docx, Doc, XLSX, PPTX, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, ePub, RTF, CSV, Text, Image;

Batch OCR:Yes

OCR Accuracy:Good

Price:$34.99

Conclusion

Best Ocr For Mac

In fact, OCR software with elegant performance on the market is still small in quantity. Among these 12 OCR software, I highly recommend Cisdem PDF Converter OCR or ABBYY FineReader Pro, both are exclusively designed to process OCR on mac, and they do bring highly accurate OCR results.