How to Extract Text from an Image or Scanned PDF (Arabic & English)
Got a photo of a document, a screenshot, or a scanned PDF and need the text as editable, copyable text? That's what OCR (Optical Character Recognition) does — and you can do it free in your browser, with accurate Arabic and English support. Here's how.
What is OCR?
OCR reads the letters inside an image and turns them into real, selectable text. So instead of retyping a page from a photo, you upload it and get the text in seconds — ready to copy, edit or download.
Steps: extract text from an image
1. Open the Image to Text (OCR) tool
Go to Confileo's OCR tool — free, no signup, and it reads both Arabic and English.
2. Upload a photo or scanned PDF
Drag in a JPG, PNG or a scanned PDF. Each page is read and converted to text.
3. Choose the language
Pick Arabic, English, or both so the engine knows what to expect — this noticeably improves accuracy.
4. Copy or download the text
The result appears in an editable box. Fix anything you need, then copy it or download it as a .txt file.
Tips for the best accuracy
- Use a clear, well-lit, straight photo — blurry or skewed images are harder to read.
- Higher resolution helps, especially for small text.
- For dense Arabic documents, the Arabic engine is tuned to read body text and headers far better than generic tools.
What can you use it for?
- Copying text from a screenshot or a photo of a page.
- Turning a scanned contract or book into editable text.
- Pulling text out of an image you can't select on a website.
- Getting Arabic text out of a photographed document without retyping.
Need an editable Word file instead?
If you want a formatted document rather than plain text, convert the scan with PDF to Word, which also uses Arabic OCR for scanned pages.
Try it now: Extract text from your image →