FreeOCR

With support for more than 10 different languages, this software impresses with both its accuracy and speed. It churns out an editable version of a small section of text in seconds, but only takes a minute or two to read documents with tiny text or bizarre formatting. You can even crop out sections of the document you don’t need to shave seconds off of the OCR’s output. It doesn’t offer many features outside of character recognition, but it doesn’t really need to. The PDF support is great and you can scan documents right into the FreeOCR with ease. Its spacious layout gives you enough room to find and copy just the text you want if you only need a section of the document. The only downside of this program is that not many people will need it, as OCR software usually comes standard with most modern printers.

For anyone still wrestling with an old freebie printer they got when they bought their computer or their office, FreeOCR is a lifesaver. It’s a light, friendly program that delivers one of the most accurate and efficient OCR readouts you can find.