How to Extract Text from Image: Tools, Methods, and Best Practices
Back to Blog Table of contents On this page How to Extract Text from Image: Tools, Methods, and Best Practices You Must Know Home › Blog › Image Data Extraction › How to Extract Text from Image: Tools, Methods, and Best Practices Categories Image Data Extraction Tags AI Data Extraction how to guide image data extraction image text extraction By Shubhankar Biswas Published August 7, 2026, 06:38 Updated August 7, 2026, 06:40 Introduction Text data can be carried through various types of document file extensions: a PDF, Word, or CSV, as well as an image. But when you need to extract text from image files, the process can get complicated fast, largely because of file complexity and how the text sits within the picture. That’s why so many people search for a reliable image text extractor: a tool that lets you pull text from image content quickly, whether you prefer an online text from image extractor or an offline desktop app. An image with text data is used in various business and personal settings. A business may receive a scanned invoice in image format that contains important financial data. A large business can also record keep old files by scanning paper documents as image PDF files to save physical space in an office. In this blog, we will discuss how to extract text from image files, the challenges involved, the best tools for the job, and other useful tips. But before we start, what exactly is image text data? TL;DR Summary Extracting text from image files means pulling readable text out of a picture, screenshot, or scanned document so it can be edited, searched, or stored digitally. You can do this manually or, more effectively, with an automated text extractor powered by OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or IDP (Intelligent Document Processing). Automated tools like Algodocs, Nanonets, Rossum, and Klippa let you extract data from image files with higher accuracy and speed than manual entry, especially for blurry, skewed, or complex documents. When choosing a picture text extractor, consider features, pricing, data privacy, and integrations. What Is an Image with Text Data An image with text data can be a screenshot or scanned copy of a document created as a .jpg or .png file format. You will also find scanned image text files in PDF format, which is very common in business settings. You may have a website opened on your cellphone and want to save some visible part of text or data, so you take a screenshot and it becomes a text image file. Similarly, you might take multiple screenshots of a website, or a preview of a file in your browser that you can’t save, but you still want that text data stored somewhere, so you take screenshots and turn those screenshots into a PDF, or simply keep them as they are to save the data on your computer. Where the Image with Text Data Is Used As discussed earlier, an image text file is used in various ways, from personal data keeping and sharing to sending data files as email attachments. Many organizations safekeep old records as scanned image text files. A vendor can send a handwritten invoice to a supplier via a scanned image email attachment. So the uses of image text data can be seen in many scenarios, which is why the ability to extract text from image files becomes more important. Challenges with Image Text Data One of the biggest challenges with image text extraction is the quality of the image and how visible the text and data are within the file. As you know, scanned image quality can be poor. Oftentimes, document quality and text visibility are hurdles for users or machines trying to capture the data from an image. Old, blurry documents are the most troublesome cases, where blurry, skewed fonts, broken page layouts, and torn images create the most trouble. Trying to pull text from image files like these often becomes nearly impossible. Even OCR based data extraction technologies struggle to understand, capture, and extract data from these types of image text documents. Manual vs Automated Image Data Extraction There are primarily two ways to extract data from an image: manually or through an automated method using OCR and IDP. Manual data extraction is prone to many errors, and its data accuracy is not reliable. Automated methods using technologies such as OCR, IDP, AI, and NLP offer higher data extraction accuracy, faster extraction speed, better control, and third-party automation, which makes them the preferred choice for anyone who needs to extract data from image files regularly. How Do You Pull Text from Image Files (Step by Step) As discussed above, there are two primary methods of extracting text from an image. But using automated methods, such as AI based data extraction tools and OCR tools, gives you far better results than typing everything out by hand. We have previously covered this topic in another blog dedicated entirely to how to extract text from image files. You can read our blog on this for a detailed walkthrough. Technologies Behind Image Text Extraction One of the foundations of image data extraction is OCR technology, which has been around for many years and remains a common way to turn image into text. OCR is widely used for data extraction from many types of files and formats. Then came ICR, which was also useful, with a few updated features. But in recent times, a new technology emerged known as IDP (Intelligent Document Processing). IDP has taken the ability to extract text from picture files to a whole new level. IDP can extract text data from very poor, skewed, and blurry images, which was not possible with OCR and ICR alone. Since IDP uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to capture and extract data, this technology is highly effective for precision and faster text extraction. Best Tools for Extracting Text from Image There are many tools you will find on the internet to pull text from
