How to Build an Azure OCR Service using IronOCR

Iron Software has created an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) library that takes the interoperability issues out of Azure OCR integration. Working with OCR libraries on Azure has always been a bit of a pain for developers. The solution for this and many other OCR headaches is IronOCR.

IronOCR features for Microsoft Azure

IronOCR includes the following features for building and OCR Service on Microsoft Azure:

Turns PDFs into searchable documents so that it is easy to extract text
Turns images into searchable documents by extracting text from images
Reads barcodes as well as QR codes
Exceptional accuracy
Runs locally and requires no SaaS (Software as a Service) which is a software distribution model where a cloud provider, such as Microsoft Azure, hosts various applications and makes these applications available to end users.
Lightning-fast speed

Let’s have a look at how the best OCR engine, Iron Software’s IronOCR, makes it easier for developers to extract text from any input document.

Let’s get started with our Azure OCR Service

In order to get started with the sample, we need to install IronOCR first.

Create a new Console application with C#
Install IronOCR via NuGet either by entering: Install-Package IronOcr or by selecting Manage NuGet packages and search for IronOCR. This is shown below
Edit your Program.cs file to look like the following:

We import the IronOcr namespace to make use of its ocr capabilities to read and extract the contents of the PDF file.
We create a new IronTesseract object, so that we can extract text from an image.

using IronOcr;
using System;
namespace IronOCR_Ex
{
 class Program
 {
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
 var ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG"))
 {
 var result = ocr.Read(Input); //Read PNG image File
 Console.WriteLine(result.Text); //Write Output to PDF document
 Console.ReadLine();
 }
 }
 }
}

using IronOcr;
using System;
namespace IronOCR_Ex
{
 class Program
 {
 static void Main(string[] args)
 {
 var ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG"))
 {
 var result = ocr.Read(Input); //Read PNG image File
 Console.WriteLine(result.Text); //Write Output to PDF document
 Console.ReadLine();
 }
 }
 }
}

Imports IronOcr
Imports System
Namespace IronOCR_Ex
	Friend Class Program
	Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String)
	Dim ocr = New IronTesseract()
	Using Input = New OcrInput("..\Images\Purgatory.PNG")
	Dim result = ocr.Read(Input) 'Read PNG image File
	Console.WriteLine(result.Text) 'Write Output to PDF document
	Console.ReadLine()
	End Using
	End Sub
	End Class
End Namespace

VB C#

Next, we open an image named Purgatory.PNG. This image forms part of the Devine Comedy by Dante - one of my favorite books. The picture looks like the next image.

Figure 2 - The text to be extracted with the optical character reading capabilities of IronOCR

The output after the above text has been extracted from the above input image text.

Figure 3 - Extracted text

Let’s do the same with a PDF document. The PDF document contains the same text to extract as Figure.

The only difference is that we will be a PDF document instead of an image. Enter the following code:

 var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var input = new OcrInput())
 {
 input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory"; //Give title to input document 
 //Supply optional password and name of document
 input.AddPdf("..\\Documents\\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante");
 var Result = Ocr.Read(input); //Read the input file
 Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf"); 
 }

 var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var input = new OcrInput())
 {
 input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory"; //Give title to input document 
 //Supply optional password and name of document
 input.AddPdf("..\\Documents\\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante");
 var Result = Ocr.Read(input); //Read the input file
 Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf"); 
 }

Dim Ocr = New IronTesseract()
	Using input = New OcrInput()
	input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory" 'Give title to input document
	'Supply optional password and name of document
	input.AddPdf("..\Documents\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante")
	Dim Result = Ocr.Read(input) 'Read the input file
	Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf")
	End Using

VB C#

Almost the same as the previous code that extracts text from an image.

Here we make use of the OcrInput method to read the current PDF document, in this case: Purgatorio.pdf. If there is metadata in the PDF file such as a title or a password, we can also feed it in.

The result gets saved as a PDF document in which we can search for text.

Note, if the PDF file is too big, an exception may be thrown.

Enough on Windows applications; let’s have a look at how we can use ocr with Microsoft Azure.

The beauty of IronOCR is that it works very well with Microsoft Azure as an Azure Function in a microservice architecture. Here is a very quick example on what a Microsoft Azure Function that works with IronOCR would look like. This Microsoft Azure function extracts text from images.

public static class OCRFunction
{
 public static HttpClient hcClient = new HttpClient();
 [FunctionName("IronOCRFunction_EX")]
 public static async Task<IActionResult> Run([HttpTrigger] HttpRequest hrRequest, ExecutionContext ecContext)
 {
 var URI = hrRequest.Query["image"];
 var saStream = await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI);
 var ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var inputOCR = new OcrInput(saStream))
 {
 var outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR);
 return new OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text);
 }
 }
}

public static class OCRFunction
{
 public static HttpClient hcClient = new HttpClient();
 [FunctionName("IronOCRFunction_EX")]
 public static async Task<IActionResult> Run([HttpTrigger] HttpRequest hrRequest, ExecutionContext ecContext)
 {
 var URI = hrRequest.Query["image"];
 var saStream = await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI);
 var ocr = new IronTesseract();
 using (var inputOCR = new OcrInput(saStream))
 {
 var outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR);
 return new OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text);
 }
 }
}

Public Module OCRFunction
	Public hcClient As New HttpClient()
	<FunctionName("IronOCRFunction_EX")>
	Public Async Function Run(<HttpTrigger> ByVal hrRequest As HttpRequest, ByVal ecContext As ExecutionContext) As Task(Of IActionResult)
	Dim URI = hrRequest.Query("image")
	Dim saStream = Await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI)
	Dim ocr = New IronTesseract()
	Using inputOCR = New OcrInput(saStream)
	Dim outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR)
	Return New OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text)
	End Using
	End Function
End Module

VB C#

This feeds the image received by the function directly to the ocr engine to be output as extracted text.

A quick recap on Microsoft Azure.

According to Microsoft: Microsoft Azure Microservices are an architectural approach to building applications where each core function, or service, is built and deployed independently. Microservice architecture is distributed and loosely coupled, so one component’s failure won’t break the whole app. independent components work together and communicate with well-defined API contracts. Build microservice applications to meet rapidly changing business needs and bring new functionalities to market faster.

A few more features of IronOCR with .NET or Microsoft Azure include the following:

The ability to perform ocr on almost any file, image, or PDF.

Lightning-fast speed in processing ocr input
Exceptional accuracy
Reads barcodes and QR codes
Runs locally, with no SaaS required
Can turn PDFs and images into searchable documents
Excellent Alternative to Azure OCR from Microsoft Cognitive Services

Image Filters to improve OCR performance

OcrInput.Rotate - Rotates images by several degrees clockwise. For anti-clockwise, use negative numbers.
OcrInput.Binarize() - This image filter turns every pixel black or white with no middle ground. This improves OCR performance.
OcrInput.ToGrayScale() - This image filter turns every pixel into a shade of grayscale. This improves OCR speed
OcrInput.Contrast() - Increases contrast automatically. This filter improves ocr speed and accuracy in low contrast scans.
OcrInput.DeNoise() - Removes digital noise. This filter should only be used where noise is expected in input documents.
OcrInput.Invert() - Inverts every color.
OcrInput.Dilate() - Dilation adds pixels to the boundaries of any object in an image.
OcrInput.Erode() - Erosion removes pixels on object boundaries.
OcrInput.Deskew() - Rotates an image so it is the right way up and orthogonal. This is very useful for OCR because Tesseract tolerance for skewed scans can be as low as 5 degrees.
OcrInput.DeepCleanBackgroundNoise() - Heavy background noise removal.
OcrInput.EnhanceResolution - Enhances the resolution of a low-quality image.

Speed performance

An example follows:

 var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
 Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\\";
 Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto;
 Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5;
 Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly;
 Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast;
 using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG"))
 {
 var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);
 Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
 }

 var Ocr = new IronTesseract();
 Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\\";
 Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto;
 Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5;
 Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly;
 Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast;
 using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG"))
 {
 var Result = Ocr.Read(Input);
 Console.WriteLine(Result.Text);
 }

Dim Ocr = New IronTesseract()
	Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\"
	Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto
	Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5
	Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly
	Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast
	Using Input = New OcrInput("..\Images\Purgatory.PNG")
	Dim Result = Ocr.Read(Input)
	Console.WriteLine(Result.Text)
	End Using

VB C#

Pricing and licensing options

There are essentially three paid licensing tiers that all work on a one-time purchase, lifetime license principle.

And yes, these are free for development purposes.

Further information

Additional resources can be found at the next link: Resources
API References can be found here: API References
Support for IronOCR products can be found here: Support
Contact Iron Software: Contact Information

IronOCR features for .NET applications running OCR on Azure and other Systems

IronOCR supports 127 international languages. Each language is available in Fast, Standard and Best quality. Some of the language packs available include:
- Bulgarian
- Armenian
- Croatian
- Afrikaans
- Danish
- Czech
- Filipino
- Finnish
- French
- German
- There are many more language packs available, to have a look at them, please follow the next link. IronOCR language packs
It works out of the box in .NET
- Support for Xamarin
- Support for Mono
- Support for Microsoft Azure
- Support for Docker on Microsoft Azure
- Supports PDF documents
- Supports Multiframe Tiffs
- Support for all major image formats
The following .NET Frameworks are supported:
- .NET Framework 4.5 and higher
- .NET Standard 2
- .NET Core 2
- .NET Core 3
- .NET Core 5
You don’t have to have Tesseract (an open-source ocr engine which supports Unicode and supports more than 100 languages) installed for IronOCR to work.
- Has improved accuracy over Tesseract
- Has improved speed over Tesseract
Corrects low quality scans of documents or files
Corrects low quality skewed scans of documents or files

What is (Optical Character Recognition) OCR?

According to Wikipedia: Optical character recognition is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo or from subtitle text superimposed on an image. Ocr stands for Optical Character Recognition. There are essentially four types of optical character recognition, they are:

OCR - Optical Character Recognition, that targets typewritten text from an input document, one character, or glyph (elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, for example ‘a’ in different fonts) at a time.
OWR - Optical Word Recognition, that targets typewritten text from an input document, one word at a time
ICR - Intelligent Character Recognition, that targets printed text such as print script (characters with no joining to other letters) and cursive text, one character or glyph at a time
IWR - Intelligent Word Recognition, that targets cursive text.

||||I|||| Toggle navigation Iron Software * Products for .NET Java Create, read, and edit PDFs for .NET Image to text in 127 languages for .NET Read and write QR & Barcodes for .NET No Office Interop required for .NET Extract structured data from websites 5 for the Price of 2 All 5 .NET product licenses from $1498 Save 60% with Iron Suite * Open Source for .NET System.Drawing.Common Replacement * About Us * Contact Us 205 N. 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C# PDF OCR Install with NuGet nuget.org/packages/ IronOcr PM > Install-Package IronOcr Explore the Docs * Get Started * Features * Languages * Code Examples * Tutorials + C# Image to Text + C# Tesseract OCR + OCR Image Filters + OCR with Computer Vision * How-Tos + License Keys + Tesseract Configuration Variables + PDF Document OCR in .NET + Setup on Azure + Setup on Linux + Setup on Docker + OCR in .NET MAUI * Troubleshooting + Contacting Technical Support o How to Make an Engineering Support Request for IronOCR o Getting the Best Support for IronOCR + Common Questions o IronOCR - Security CVE o Why IronOCR and not Tesseract + Troubleshooting Guides o Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio o Apply a license key in IronOCR o Reduce file size of output PDF in IronOcr o X and Y coordinates change in OcrResult Class o Content Areas & Crop Regions with PDFs o Captcha o Save image with different image processing applied o Quick IronOCR Troubleshooting o Identity Documents o Debugging Azure Functions Project on Local Machine + Language Packs o Custom OCR Language Packs o Dot Matrix OCR o Equations o 7 Segment Digital/LCD Displays o Financial Language Pack o Slashed zeros o Arabic Numerals + Exception Messages o Tesseract Fallback Logic o libgdiplus o Azure Functions Deployment o System.Drawing.Common Alternatives (.NET 7 & Non-Windows) o IronOCR Runtimes Folder o SEHException with non-AVX CPUs o leptonica-1.78.0.dll + Product Release Notes o IronOCR v2022.11.10109 o IronOCR v2022.8.8198 o IronOCR v2022.8.7804 o IronOCR v2022.8.7516 o IronOCR v2022.1.0 o IronOCR v2021.12.0 o IronOCR v2021.11.0 * Product Updates + Changelog * API Reference How to Build an Azure OCR Service using IronOCR Iron Software has created an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) library that takes the interoperability issues out of Azure OCR integration. Working with OCR libraries on Azure has always been a bit of a pain for developers. The solution for this and many other OCR headaches is IronOCR. IronOCR features for Microsoft Azure IronOCR includes the following features for building and OCR Service on Microsoft Azure: * Turns PDFs into searchable documents so that it is easy to extract text * Turns images into searchable documents by extracting text from images * Reads barcodes as well as QR codes * Exceptional accuracy * Runs locally and requires no SaaS (Software as a Service) which is a software distribution model where a cloud provider, such as Microsoft Azure, hosts various applications and makes these applications available to end users. * Lightning-fast speed Let’s have a look at how the best OCR engine, Iron Software’s IronOCR, makes it easier for developers to extract text from any input document. Let’s get started with our Azure OCR Service In order to get started with the sample, we need to install IronOCR first. 1. Create a new Console application with C# 2. Install IronOCR via NuGet either by entering: Install-Package IronOcr or by selecting Manage NuGet packages and search for IronOCR. This is shown below 3. Edit your Program.cs file to look like the following: * We import the IronOcr namespace to make use of its ocr capabilities to read and extract the contents of the PDF file. * We create a new IronTesseract object, so that we can extract text from an image. using IronOcr; using System; namespace IronOCR_Ex { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG")) { var result = ocr.Read(Input); //Read PNG image File Console.WriteLine(result.Text); //Write Output to PDF document Console.ReadLine(); } } } } using IronOcr; using System; namespace IronOCR_Ex { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG")) { var result = ocr.Read(Input); //Read PNG image File Console.WriteLine(result.Text); //Write Output to PDF document Console.ReadLine(); } } } } Imports IronOcr Imports System Namespace IronOCR_Ex Friend Class Program Shared Sub Main(ByVal args() As String) Dim ocr = New IronTesseract() Using Input = New OcrInput("..\Images\Purgatory.PNG") Dim result = ocr.Read(Input) 'Read PNG image File Console.WriteLine(result.Text) 'Write Output to PDF document Console.ReadLine() End Using End Sub End Class End Namespace VB C# 1. Next, we open an image named Purgatory.PNG. This image forms part of the Devine Comedy by Dante - one of my favorite books. The picture looks like the next image. Figure 2 - The text to be extracted with the optical character reading capabilities of IronOCR 1. The output after the above text has been extracted from the above input image text. Figure 3 - Extracted text 1. Let’s do the same with a PDF document. The PDF document contains the same text to extract as Figure. The only difference is that we will be a PDF document instead of an image. Enter the following code: var Ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var input = new OcrInput()) { input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory"; //Give title to input document //Supply optional password and name of document input.AddPdf("..\\Documents\\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante"); var Result = Ocr.Read(input); //Read the input file Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf"); } var Ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var input = new OcrInput()) { input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory"; //Give title to input document //Supply optional password and name of document input.AddPdf("..\\Documents\\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante"); var Result = Ocr.Read(input); //Read the input file Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf"); } Dim Ocr = New IronTesseract() Using input = New OcrInput() input.Title = "Divine Comedy - Purgatory" 'Give title to input document 'Supply optional password and name of document input.AddPdf("..\Documents\Purgatorio.pdf", "dante") Dim Result = Ocr.Read(input) 'Read the input file Result.SaveAsSearchablePdf("SearchablePDFDocument.pdf") End Using VB C# Almost the same as the previous code that extracts text from an image. Here we make use of the OcrInput method to read the current PDF document, in this case: Purgatorio.pdf. If there is metadata in the PDF file such as a title or a password, we can also feed it in. The result gets saved as a PDF document in which we can search for text. Note, if the PDF file is too big, an exception may be thrown. 1. Enough on Windows applications; let’s have a look at how we can use ocr with Microsoft Azure. The beauty of IronOCR is that it works very well with Microsoft Azure as an Azure Function in a microservice architecture. Here is a very quick example on what a Microsoft Azure Function that works with IronOCR would look like. This Microsoft Azure function extracts text from images. public static class OCRFunction { public static HttpClient hcClient = new HttpClient(); [FunctionName("IronOCRFunction_EX")] public static async Task Run([HttpTrigger] HttpRequest hrRequest, ExecutionContext ecContext) { var URI = hrRequest.Query["image"]; var saStream = await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI); var ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var inputOCR = new OcrInput(saStream)) { var outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR); return new OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text); } } } public static class OCRFunction { public static HttpClient hcClient = new HttpClient(); [FunctionName("IronOCRFunction_EX")] public static async Task Run([HttpTrigger] HttpRequest hrRequest, ExecutionContext ecContext) { var URI = hrRequest.Query["image"]; var saStream = await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI); var ocr = new IronTesseract(); using (var inputOCR = new OcrInput(saStream)) { var outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR); return new OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text); } } } Public Module OCRFunction Public hcClient As New HttpClient() Public Async Function Run( ByVal hrRequest As HttpRequest, ByVal ecContext As ExecutionContext) As Task(Of IActionResult) Dim URI = hrRequest.Query("image") Dim saStream = Await hcClient.GetStreamAsync(URI) Dim ocr = New IronTesseract() Using inputOCR = New OcrInput(saStream) Dim outputOCR = ocr.Read(inputOCR) Return New OkObjectResult(outputOCR.Text) End Using End Function End Module VB C# This feeds the image received by the function directly to the ocr engine to be output as extracted text. A quick recap on Microsoft Azure. According to Microsoft: Microsoft Azure Microservices are an architectural approach to building applications where each core function, or service, is built and deployed independently. Microservice architecture is distributed and loosely coupled, so one component’s failure won’t break the whole app. independent components work together and communicate with well-defined API contracts. Build microservice applications to meet rapidly changing business needs and bring new functionalities to market faster. A few more features of IronOCR with .NET or Microsoft Azure include the following: The ability to perform ocr on almost any file, image, or PDF. * Lightning-fast speed in processing ocr input * Exceptional accuracy * Reads barcodes and QR codes * Runs locally, with no SaaS required * Can turn PDFs and images into searchable documents * Excellent Alternative to Azure OCR from Microsoft Cognitive Services Image Filters to improve OCR performance * OcrInput.Rotate - Rotates images by several degrees clockwise. For anti-clockwise, use negative numbers. * OcrInput.Binarize() - This image filter turns every pixel black or white with no middle ground. This improves OCR performance. * OcrInput.ToGrayScale() - This image filter turns every pixel into a shade of grayscale. This improves OCR speed * OcrInput.Contrast() - Increases contrast automatically. This filter improves ocr speed and accuracy in low contrast scans. * OcrInput.DeNoise() - Removes digital noise. This filter should only be used where noise is expected in input documents. * OcrInput.Invert() - Inverts every color. * OcrInput.Dilate() - Dilation adds pixels to the boundaries of any object in an image. * OcrInput.Erode() - Erosion removes pixels on object boundaries. * OcrInput.Deskew() - Rotates an image so it is the right way up and orthogonal. This is very useful for OCR because Tesseract tolerance for skewed scans can be as low as 5 degrees. * OcrInput.DeepCleanBackgroundNoise() - Heavy background noise removal. * OcrInput.EnhanceResolution - Enhances the resolution of a low-quality image. Speed performance An example follows: var Ocr = new IronTesseract(); Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\\"; Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto; Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5; Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly; Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast; using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG")) { var Result = Ocr.Read(Input); Console.WriteLine(Result.Text); } var Ocr = new IronTesseract(); Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\\"; Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto; Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5; Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly; Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast; using (var Input = new OcrInput("..\\Images\\Purgatory.PNG")) { var Result = Ocr.Read(Input); Console.WriteLine(Result.Text); } Dim Ocr = New IronTesseract() Ocr.Configuration.BlackListCharacters = "~`$#^*_}{][|\" Ocr.Configuration.PageSegmentationMode = TesseractPageSegmentationMode.Auto Ocr.Configuration.TesseractVersion = TesseractVersion.Tesseract5 Ocr.Configuration.EngineMode = TesseractEngineMode.LstmOnly Ocr.Language = OcrLanguage.EnglishFast Using Input = New OcrInput("..\Images\Purgatory.PNG") Dim Result = Ocr.Read(Input) Console.WriteLine(Result.Text) End Using VB C# Pricing and licensing options There are essentially three paid licensing tiers that all work on a one-time purchase, lifetime license principle. And yes, these are free for development purposes. Further information * Additional resources can be found at the next link: Resources * API References can be found here: API References * Support for IronOCR products can be found here: Support * Contact Iron Software: Contact Information IronOCR features for .NET applications running OCR on Azure and other Systems * IronOCR supports 127 international languages. Each language is available in Fast, Standard and Best quality. Some of the language packs available include: + Bulgarian + Armenian + Croatian + Afrikaans + Danish + Czech + Filipino + Finnish + French + German + There are many more language packs available, to have a look at them, please follow the next link. IronOCR language packs * It works out of the box in .NET + Support for Xamarin + Support for Mono + Support for Microsoft Azure + Support for Docker on Microsoft Azure + Supports PDF documents + Supports Multiframe Tiffs + Support for all major image formats * The following .NET Frameworks are supported: + .NET Framework 4.5 and higher + .NET Standard 2 + .NET Core 2 + .NET Core 3 + .NET Core 5 * You don’t have to have Tesseract (an open-source ocr engine which supports Unicode and supports more than 100 languages) installed for IronOCR to work. + Has improved accuracy over Tesseract + Has improved speed over Tesseract * Corrects low quality scans of documents or files * Corrects low quality skewed scans of documents or files What is (Optical Character Recognition) OCR? According to Wikipedia: Optical character recognition is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo or from subtitle text superimposed on an image. Ocr stands for Optical Character Recognition. There are essentially four types of optical character recognition, they are: * OCR - Optical Character Recognition, that targets typewritten text from an input document, one character, or glyph (elemental symbol within an agreed set of symbols, for example ‘a’ in different fonts) at a time. * OWR - Optical Word Recognition, that targets typewritten text from an input document, one word at a time * ICR - Intelligent Character Recognition, that targets printed text such as print script (characters with no joining to other letters) and cursive text, one character or glyph at a time * IWR - Intelligent Word Recognition, that targets cursive text. Table of Contents * IronOCR features for Microsoft Azure * Let’s get started with our Azure OCR Service * A few more features of IronOCR with .NET or Microsoft Azure include the following: * Image Filters to improve OCR performance * Speed performance * Pricing and licensing options * Further information * IronOCR features for .NET applications running OCR on Azure and other Systems * What is (Optical Character Recognition) OCR? Was This Page Useful? * Join our Bug Bounty for Iron Swag API Reference Licensing Ask a Question Ready to get started? Version: 2023.1 just released Start for Free Total downloads: 649,583 View Licenses > Try IronOCR for Free Get Set Up in 5 Minutes Install with NuGet Version: 2023.1 Install-Package IronOcr nuget.org/packages/IronOcr/ 1. In Solution Explorer, right-click References, Manage NuGet Packages 2. Select Browse and search "IronOCR" 3. Select the package and install Download DLL Version: 2023.1 Download Now or download Windows Installer here. 1. Download and unzip IronOCR to a location such as ~/Libs within your Solution directory 2. In Visual Studio Solution Explorer, right click References. Select Browse, "IronOCR.dll" Licenses from $749 Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. Now that you’ve downloaded IronOCR Want to deploy IronOCR to a live project for FREE? Not ready to buy? Want to deploy IronOCR to a live project for FREE? What’s included? 30 days of fully-functional product Test and share in a live environment No restrictions in production Get your free 30-day Trial Key instantly. Thank you. If you'd like to speak to our licensing team: Schedule a call Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. No credit card or account creation required Your Trial License Key has been emailed to you. Not ready to buy? Thank you. View your license options: Thank you. If you'd like to speak to our licensing team: View Licensing Schedule a call Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. Want to deploy IronOCR to a live project for FREE? Not ready to buy? Want to deploy IronOCR to a live project for FREE? What’s included? 30 days of fully-functional product Test and share in a live environment No restrictions in production Get your free 30-day Trial Key instantly. Thank you. If you'd like to speak to our licensing team: Schedule a call Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. No credit card or account creation required Your Trial License Key has been emailed to you. Not ready to buy? Download IronOCR free to apply your Trial Licenses Key Thank you. If you'd like to speak to our licensing team: Install with NuGet View Licensing Schedule a call Licenses from $749. Have a question? Get in touch. Have a question? Get in touch with our development team. Free 30-Day Trial Key Fully-functional product, get the key instantly Tesseract 5 OCR in the languages you need, We support 127+. Search Documentation * Code Examples * API Reference * How-Tos * Features * Credits * Blog * Product Brochure Tutorials * Get Started * C# Image to Text * C# Tesseract OCR * OCR Image Filters * OCR with Computer Vision Licensing * Buy a License * Support Extensions * Resellers * License Keys * EULA Try IronOCR Free * Download on NuGet * Download DLL * Download Windows Installer * 30-Day Trial License When you need your PDF to look like HTML, fast. Tesseract 5 OCR in the languages you need, We support 127+. When you need to read, write, and style, QR & Barcodes, fast. The Excel API you need, without the Office Interop hassle. The power you need to scrape & output clean, structured data. The complete .NET Suite for your office. * IRON SUITE * | * IRON PDF * IRON OCR * IRON BARCODE * IRON XL * IRON WEBSCRAPER 205 N. 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