[nabs-l] Best OCR Apps for the iPhone?

[Bryan Jones]

Hi Arielle,

I've personally had good success using Prizmo to OCR some course materials as well as, mail, business cards, etc, but I've also heard from many folks who struggle to get decent results with Prizmo or any of the IOS OCR Apps. It takes some patience and practice, and it seems to help if you have an iPhone 4 or 4S, both of which have better cameras than the iPhone 3GS. I've pasted a link to a great beginner's guide to using Prizmo from the Applevis website, which is a good resource for reviews and discussion of accessible IOS Apps. I've also pasted links below to 3 of the most popular OCR Apps, but there are many more which you can find by searching that same site.

A Guide to using Prizmo:
http://www.applevis.com/guides/guide-using-prizmo-scanning-and-ocr-application-iphone

Prizmo review:
http://www.applevis.com/ios-app-directory/lifestyle/prizmo

SayText review:
http://www.applevis.com/ios-app-directory/productivity/saytext

TextDetective review:
http://applevis.com/ios-app-directory/utilities/textdetective

HTH,
Cheers,
Bryan

On Aug 2, 2012, at 9:09 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I got an iPhone about two months ago and I have heard there are some
> good apps for reading printed text (mail, handouts etc.) Do any of you
> have suggestions regarding the most reliable OCR apps to get? One
> issue I have is that I have really bad aim when taking photos with a
> phone camera, so I would like to get one that is highly accurate
> and/or that provides viewfinder feedback.
> I have heard that VizWiz (an app that will send a photo of something
> to a human reader who will send back a translation within a few
> minutes) is good, but I would like to use a software app so I don't
> have to wait.