free text OCR app opinion

By HarmonicaPlayer, 29 November, 2014

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

hello all. I have a question i'd like feedback on. I use an iPod Touch fifth gen with IOS 8.1.1. Which of the free OCR apps is most accessible/reliable text detective or saytext? also if there is another free text OCR app thats accessible i don't know of please let me know:) thanks lots.

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Comments

By Carlos Alonso on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 18:41

In my experience these free apps can be very unreliable depending on your photo taking skills. I think they work well for the sighted population since they are able to easily focus the camera before taking the pic. So you may get a fast and near perfectOCR and just gibberish from your next picture. Apps like the KNFB reader perform a process to clean up the photo before the image is fed to the OCR engine and that's why it's a lot more reliable than the free apps, of course, the price is prohibitive for some. I have to say that I've tried these apps on iPhones and not on iPods, which have lower resolution cameras, but I think you can get the free apps to work for you with practice but you have to taper down your expectations for consistent quality scans.

By HarmonicaPlayer on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 18:41

In reply to by Carlos Alonso

ok thanks for your info:) what bar code scanning apps do you use and which are the most reliable?

I've used a couple of free ones, like Red Laser, I forget the other one, Red Laser works reasonably well, as far as the paid ones, I also use Recognizer, which is an object recognition and labelling app, you can search for it in this site, it includes a bar code reading function which is also pretty good in my opinion. I've read in this site that one of the best bar code apps is Digit Eyes, which I think costs $15, I don't have Digit Eyes, but if you search this site you'll find lots of comments in its app directory entry.

By HarmonicaPlayer on Monday, November 24, 2014 - 18:41

In reply to by Carlos Alonso

does the apps you use are they capable of identifying bartcodes on medication bottles/perscription info?