Word Scanner Image to Text: Reading Print With the Camera

Yes. A word scanner that turns an image into text is already in your phone: point the camera at printed words, select them on screen, and paste them into a note or an email. Apple calls its version Live Text and Google's is Lens. Both hand you a passage on the clipboard, with no file of the page.

That last point decides when the camera route is the right one. It suits a case number on a folder tab or one paragraph of a notice. It does not suit a lease.

Take a photograph anyway when the page is a client's lease or pleading. The clipboard gives you a sentence to paste, and the saved image is what you check letter by letter. Store that photograph with the matter if you may need it as documentary evidence, and put the date in the name so authentication has a source.

What is a word scanner that turns an image into text?

A word scanner, in the sense people search for, is a phone feature that recognizes printed words in the camera view and gives them back as characters you can select. Nothing is scanned to a file. The camera image is read on the spot and the text goes wherever you paste it.

The phrase covers three different things, and it helps to know which one you are holding:

This post is about the first row. For the second, see the post on how to copy text in a photo already saved on the phone. The third is what people mean by "photo scan OCR" or a tool to convert a photo document to text, and it is the route for anything longer than a passage.

Pulling printed words into a note with the iPhone camera

On an iPhone the camera reads print in two places: the Camera app, where Live Text lets you copy what is in the frame, and text fields in apps such as Notes, where a Scan Text command types the words straight into what you are writing. Apple documents both.

From the Camera app

Apple's user guide page on how to use Live Text with your iPhone camera describes the sequence. You open Camera and hold the phone so the words sit inside the frame. A yellow frame appears around the detected text, and you tap the button that appears with it. You then touch and hold the text and use the grab points to mark what you want. The menu Apple lists includes Copy, Select All, Look Up, Translate, Search Web and Share.

The same page says the feature can be switched off under Settings, Camera, Show Detected Text. If no yellow frame ever appears, look there first.

Straight into a note

Apple's page on how to scan text and documents in Notes covers the second route. In a note you tap the attachment button, choose Scan Text, position the phone so the text appears within the camera frame, drag or use the grab points to choose the words, and tap Insert. The words land in the note as typed text.

Apple qualifies this with "in supported languages". Its iOS and iPadOS feature availability page lists the Live Text languages, so check it before you rely on the feature for a document in another language.

Pointing Google Lens at a printed page on Android

On Android the camera route runs through Google Lens, opened from the search bar of the Google app. Google's documented steps have you take a picture with the Lens shutter first and then select text on the captured frame, so it is a two-tap version of the same idea.

Google's help page on region selection in Lens gives the steps:

1. Open the Google app.
2. In the search bar, tap Google Lens.
3. Under "Search with your camera," tap Search.
4. Point the camera at the page and tap the shutter.
5. Tap the text, or drag the corners of the region box over it, until the "Select text" button appears.
6. Tap Select text, then choose Copy from the menu.

The menu Google lists also offers Listen, Translate and Search, plus actions that depend on what you selected, such as calling a phone number or opening an address in Maps. For a page in another language, the post on how to translate a photo of a document covers what those translations are good for.

Where Lens lives differs from phone to phone. Google's page on getting information about your photos and surroundings lists three places to open it: Google Photos, Google Assistant and the Google app, the last two on some phones and not others. If the Lens icon is missing from your search bar, check which of those your phone has. The post on copying text in a photo covers the Google Photos route.

How much of a page can a camera word scanner take at once?

A camera word scanner takes what fits in one frame and what you select inside it. Neither Apple's nor Google's page states a limit in words or lines. The working limit is physical: the further back you stand to fit more of the page, the smaller each letter becomes on the sensor.

Treat it as a passage tool and test the edge yourself. A fair trial on your own phone:

1. Hold the phone over a full page of ordinary print and use Select All.
2. Paste into a blank note.
3. Read the first line, the last line and one line from the middle against the paper.
4. Count the paragraphs. Check that none is missing and none is out of order.

If the full page fails that trial, halve the area and try again. Whatever the result, some things do not come across in any copy-and-paste: the page layout, the columns of a table as columns, the header and footer as something separate from the body, and the position of a signature or stamp. You get a run of characters.

Three captures in a row also give you three pastes with nothing tying them to pages one, two and three. For a whole document, photograph each page and convert the set. The post on how to convert a picture PDF to text walks through that. Schema Law takes a PDF, PNG or JPEG up to 20 MB and reads the pages into text and tables you can export; the export formats on the homepage show the choices.

Live camera capture or a saved photo: which leaves a record?

A saved photo leaves a record and a live capture does not. When you copy words from the camera view, the only thing left in your hands is the pasted text. There is no image to check it against later, and nothing to show anyone what the page looked like.

In a matter file that difference is practical. Suppose a paralegal, Dana, is at a client's kitchen table and reads a policy number off a declarations page with the camera, pasting it into an intake note. Back at the office the number is one digit short. The page is across town. Had she pressed the shutter once before selecting the text, the photo would settle it in seconds.

A habit that costs almost nothing:

• Photograph first, then copy. Take an ordinary photo of the page or the passage. Copy the words from that photo or from the camera, whichever is quicker.
• Proofread on the spot. Read names, numbers and dates in the pasted text against the paper while the paper is in front of you.
• Say where the text came from. Add a line to the note: the document, the page and the date you captured it.
• Move the photo to the file. A picture left in a personal camera roll is not in the matter file.

Use the live camera for speed when the words are throwaway: a phone number to dial, an address to look up. When the words will be quoted, relied on or sent to someone, keep the picture.