# OCR

> Optical character recognition converts text in images and scanned documents into machine-readable characters.

- HTML version: https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/ocr
- Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition

Optical character recognition converts pixels that depict writing into machine-readable text. It
may also return word positions, reading order, and confidence scores. Those details matter when the
text sits in a table, form, receipt, or multi-column page.

OCR answers "what characters are present?" It does not, by itself, decide what those characters
mean. Reading `01/04/26` does not establish whether it is a date, which date convention applies, or
how a downstream system should use it. [Intelligent Document Processing](/ideas/intelligent-document-processing)
adds document classification, layout and language understanding, field extraction, validation, and
workflow decisions around the recognised text.

Image quality, handwriting, unfamiliar typefaces, page geometry, and mixed languages all affect
recognition. Aggregate character accuracy can hide the errors that matter most, so evaluation
should include the fields and document types used by the product.

## Questions it prompts

* Does the task need plain text, or must it preserve location, reading order, and table structure?
* Which document conditions produce the costly errors?
* Can preprocessing improve the image without deleting useful marks or changing evidence?
* How will low-confidence text reach a person or a later validation stage?

## Related ideas

- [Intelligent Document Processing](https://robbiepalmer.me/ideas/intelligent-document-processing.md): A pipeline that turns varied documents into validated, structured data by combining recognition, language understanding, and workflow rules.

## Where it appears

- Project: [Commercial Knowledge Graph](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/commercial-knowledge-graph.md)
- Project: [Intelligent Document Processing](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/intelligent-document-processing.md)
- Project: [Recipe Site](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/recipe-site.md)
- ADR: [ADR 031: OpenRouter](https://robbiepalmer.me/projects/recipe-site/adrs/031-openrouter.md)

---

Markdown index of this site: https://robbiepalmer.me/llms.txt