The Sherlock Holmes Of OCR Apps

Posted under:App Discovery,iOS,iOS Apps,iPhone,iPodby VaShaun

How many times have you wished that there was a good OCR solution for your IOS device? Well, the latest OCR app to hit the Apple IOS AppStore just may be what you have been waiting for.

The name of this great new app is, Text Detective. It is developed by a company named BlindSight, in cooperation from the National Institutes of Health who in part help to fund this project.

I know what you are thinking. “Oh great, another OCR app that promises me a way to use the camera on my I device to read documents.” But this one really does deliver on its promises.

I tried using this app on my last years tax information from the Social Security Administration, and the results were astounding.

Some of you know how difficult tax information from the SSA can be. Text Detective had little trouble with it. I say little, because there was a few tildes and some other gibberish, but if you are expecting a perfectly clean scan from a mobile device, I think that you will be waiting a long time.

Text Detective is an extremely easy app to use. When you first launch the app you are walked through a five step tutorial and then you are ready for your first scan.

At first it may seem a bit awkward because the app works in landscape orientation, but once you adjust to this, using the app is easy as pie.

Take and make sure that you have sufficient lighting. Your results will vary depending on you’re lighting. Also you need to make sure that the document that you are scanning lies flat so that the app can see the text clearly.

Place your iPhone down on the page making sure that your camera lens is in the center of the page. Raise your phone about eight to ten inches or so, and then while holding it steady double tap the Start Scan button.

Once Text Detective sees the text your iPhone will vibrate. Then it will start doing the OCR. Wait a few seconds and the app will alert you that the OCR is complete.

Now all that you have to do to read your results is to right flick on the scan results page until you get to the edit field that has your finished scan.

It is that simple. In my opinion this is the best OCR app that I have tried so far. It is a lot easier to use than Prizmo and I think that it gives some very good results. Text Detective costs $1.99 and is available now in the IOS AppStore.

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think about Text Detective, and if you know of another OCR app that you like better, please let me know.