1. Best Voice To Text Software
2. Best Voice To Text Software For Mac 2018 Football
3. Best Voice Recognition Software For Mac 2018
4. Best Voice To Text Software For Mac 2018 Collections

Whether you need to edit PDFs, images or scanned documents, extract text from them or just make them searchable, we’ve tested the most accurate OCR applications for Mac of 2019.

Purchase the MacSpeech Dictate software to do regular dictation; as of May 2010, it is the only such product for the Macintosh. MacSpeech Dictate requires some voice training to get it to full efficiency, but once that is completed, you can dictate into any open application, and MacSpeech will convert your voice to regular text. How to convert audio to text! Free and easy! Mp3 or voice to text. I hope this helps you! Stay tuned by subscribing! Best Way To Transcribe Audio Podcasts To Text - Duration: 8:02. On the Mac and Windows the 'desktop app' is more than just a shortcut to the website. Disconnect your wifi and close your default browser (set to clear cookies, offline data, active logins, cache, site preferences, browsing and download history).

Optical Character Recognition software can scan, extract text and convert documents such as PDFs, images, handwriting, magazines, textbooks and more to make them searchable or editable.

Nowadays, powerful OCR apps like ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac are incredibly fast and accurate at scanning documents and preserving the formatting with accuracy rates of up to 99.8%.

Before diving in however, there’s a few things to be aware of to avoid disappointment when choosing the best scanner software for Macs.

• In our research, one thing that clearly stood out is that not all OCR programs on Mac perform the same. The accuracy and speed varies considerably and there are definitely some that do a better job than others. OCR is a highly specialized technology and we found that in most cases, you get what you pay for when it comes to software that scans text accurately and quickly. This is essential if you want to avoid having to do a lot of tedious manual correction of text in PDFs and other documents.
• The best OCR apps maintain the formatting of your original document after OCR scanning. Cheap OCR apps will only dump a text file onto your Mac (which of course is fine if that’s all you want). However, most people want their document formatting preserving the same as the original document and budget OCR apps simply can’t do this. The top OCR tools can export to popular formats such as Microsoft Word, and ePub/eBook formats while not losing the original formatting of the PDF or document.
• Many of these apps are ideal if you want to go paperless although they’re most notable for their OCR capabilities. If you want something that also serves as a digital office check out our look at the best paperless office software for Mac.

With this in mind, here’s our selection of the top performing OCR tools for Mac in order of ranking.

1. FineReader Pro (Limited Offer: 25% Off)

ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac has been around for almost 20 years now and is still the most highly rated and specialized OCR software for both Mac and PC.

FineReader Pro has an accuracy rate of 99.8% and although this depends on the quality of the original document, the OCR text recognition performance is outstanding and easily the best on the market.

It certainly does the fastest job of accurately recognizing text and preserving the original formatting of the scanned document including text size, font styles, images, tables and layouts.

The FineReader Pro user interface is user friendly and straightforward. To get going, simply select the source of your scan and FineReader Pro will automatically detect which items can be scanned.

You can select three different sources:

• Mac Hardrive: A PDF, image, digital camera photo or other document already saved on your Mac. Alternatively, you can simply Ctrl-Click on any file saved on your Mac and select Open With > ABBYY Finereader Pro from the drop down menu.
• Flatbed Document Scanner: You can use a flatbed document scanner or multi-functional peripheral (MFP) such as an all-in-one printer If you need to digitize a document first. Note that FineReader Pro for Mac only works with ICA compatible devices that are officially supported on Mac including Fujitsu ScanSnap scanners – it does not support TWAIN. You can also use network scanners if you’re in an office environment. You can find a list of official ICA compatible devices here.
• iPhone: A photo taken on an iPhone including documents, receipts and other notes that you may have taken on the move.

You can then then choose to convert the document to a searchable PDF PDF/A or editable format such as Microsoft Word (DOCX), Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet (XSLX) or HTML web page format.

FineReader Pro for Mac also allows you convert to Apple Pages, Apple Numbers, OpenOffice Writer (ODT), RTF, Powerpoint (PPTX) and eBook EPUB/FB2 formats. Note that it can only convert password protected PDF documents if you know the password.

eBook export is another useful touch as it allows you to read documents on iPad, Kindle and other devices which support the EPUB and FB2 formats.

FineReader Pro automatically detects the scanning language but you can choose to scan in 192 different languages or a mixture of several including right to left scripts such as Arabic and Hebrew.

It doesn’t matter how long the document is as there’s no word limit on scans although the longer the document, the longer the scan will take.

One page takes no more than a few seconds to scan so even documents that run into hundreds of pages don’t take more than a minute or so.

FineReader Pro uses it’s own proprietary ADRT (Adaptive Document Recognition Technology) scanning engine which can detect everything from tables and headers to footnotes and page numbers. This even includes native formatting attributes meaning it’s easy to update or modify tables afterwards just as if you were editing the original document.

To speed things up however, you can highlight specific text or images on a page to scan if you don’t want it to scan the entire document.

This allows you to exclude specific page elements such as page numbers, headers, footers and pictures so that you just get the raw text.

In general, Finereader Pro is very good at recognizing all types of fonts and accurately digitizing them. The accuracy of any OCR tool often depends on the quality of the original document but Finereader Pro is remarkably good at detecting text on older and less than perfect text quality in documents.

For optimal results, ABBYY recommend using Grayscale/color mode with a resolution of 300 dpi and a font size 10 or larger and 400-600 dpi for smaller text.

On a clear PDF document you can expect almost 100% accuracy but it may be considerably less on other documents in bad condition or where the text is barely legible. Like most OCR apps however, FineReader Pro cannot recognize hand writing (this requires a different technology known as ICR).

This level of accuracy means less time having to manually edit or correct documents afterwards which is usually one of the biggest problems with OCR software.

FineReader Pro for Mac is easily the best we’ve tried when it comes to preserving the format and layout of the original document. When a scan is complete, Finereader Pro For Mac will highlight the text it has detected but displays the document in it’s original form.

One of the most convenient features of ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac is the ability to scan photos that you’ve taken on your phone. This is ideal for archiving receipts and other documents when you get home or back to the office.

The application analyzes and corrects the image before scanning to ensure that the scanned text is as accurate as possible. Even on blurred or photos taken in low lighting such as the magazine page below, this works surprisingly well.

If you need to OCR large batches of documents on a regular basis, you can also use macOS Automator to automatically run OCR scans using FineReader Pro.

For instance, you can specify a folder to drag and drop documents into that will automatically OCR scan documents periodically.

Overall, in terms of OCR accuracy, speed, format preservation and conversion formats, ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac is the best we’ve tried. The real test of OCR software is how it performs on documents with low text quality or images in poor lighting and ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac seems able to accurately read whatever you throw at it.

Although you can buy it through other vendors, we recommend buying direct from ABBYY as you will get updates to the software much quicker. You also get free phone support from ABBYY which is another bonus compared to most products which only offer support online or via email.

It usually retails for $119.99 but for a limited period ABBYY is currently offering 25% off FineReader Promeaning it costs $89.99.

Note that if you’re based in the UK or Europe, you need to go via the ABBYY Europe store to get 10% off.

Students and teachers can also get a 30% educational discount.

For more you can also check out our FineReader Pro For Mac review.

Pros:

The best for OCR accuracy and speed

Converts to edit PDF, Word, Excel and more

Maintains formatting of the original document

Cons:

No support for older TWAIN scanners

2. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

At one time, Adobe Acrobat Pro was the only software for turning PDFs into something editable or searchable on Mac.

In fact Adobe invented the PDF file format.

Nowadays that’s completely changed but when it comes to doing pretty much anything with a PDF, Acrobat Pro is still incredibly powerful.

It’s important to be aware that unlike ABBYY Finereader Pro for Mac, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is not primarily a dedicated OCR software. Rather it’s a PDF conversion software that has an in-built OCR engine that can take PDFs or other formats and turn tjem into something that can be searched by keywords or edited.

If you just want to make the text editable or searchable in a PDF document, it’s very straightforward.

• Open a PDF file in Acrobat.
• Click on the Edit PDF tool in the righthand pane. Acrobat automatically performs an optical character recognition scan (OCR) to your document and converts it to a fully editable copy of your PDF almost instantly.
• Click on the element you want to edit. You’ll see that any new text you add matches the look of the original font.
• Choose File > Save As to save your new edited document.

If you want to perform an OCR scan of an image, scanned document or other file, the process is as follows:

• Import the file into Acrobat either from your Mac or flatbed document scanner. All documents must have a resolution of at least 72dpi (Dots Per Inch) in order to scan in Adobe Acrobat Pro DC which is a fairly low requirement. However Adobe recommends scanning at 300 dpi (magazine print quality) for the most accurate results. You can also add multiple files if you want to OCR more than one document in one go.

• When the document opens in Acrobat, click on the Enhance Scans option on the right:

• Highlight the document or area that you want to turn into an editable PDF:

• Use the Adjust enhancement level slider to tweak the contrast to make the text as clear as possible.

If there are images in your document, the PDF Output Style options allow you to create 3 different types of PDF and relate to how Adobe Acrobat handles images.

You can choose to create a Searchable Image, Exact Searchable Image and Editable Text & Images.

• Searchable Image means images will be preserved but deskewed and an invisible text layer placed over it.
• Exact Searchable Image preserves the original image location and does not deskew it.
• Editable Text & Images synthesizes a new custom font that’s very similar to the original and preserves the page background in low-resolution.

There’s also a Downsampling option which allows you to reduce the resolution and thus the file size of the document you want to OCR which is useful if it has a lot images. Downsampling decreases the number of pixels in images after OCR scanning is complete.

• Finally, select Recognize Text from the toolbar to start the OCR scan.

• In a matter of seconds, you’ll have a searchable PDF that you can edit.

The difference between Adobe Acrobat Pro and ABBYY Finereader Pro is that in Acrobat, you can instantly start editing the PDF including formatting, text and images. ABBYY’s product meanwhile requires you to export to another format first – such as Word, Excel or Pages – in order to edit.

Acrobat even allows you to add video and audio to PDF files and edit them in the Abobe Scan mobile app.

The OCR engine in previous versions of Acrobat was quite slow and inaccurate but Adobe has improved it significantly nowadays. One big improvement has been the introduction of “Preflight” which will go through a document you have scanned and check for character recognition errors.

It does this by analyzing bitmaps of text and then inserts words and characters it thinks are correct. If Acrobat Pro is uncertain, it highlights the word as suspect so that you can easily see it and then check it manually yourself.

To use this feature, simply search for “Preflight” in the Search Tools box on the top right-hand side of the interface.In the OCR Preflight search bar, type OCR and select Make OCR text visible.

Then just click the Analyze and fix button at the bottom.

After Analysis, save the file and close the Preflight tool.

Finally, open the Layer panel on the left to reveal the new layers. If you click on the eye symbol to the left of Invisible text, you can toggle the layers on and off to compare and decide whether to keep the corrections Adobe Acrobat has suggested. Overall, when it comes to OCR converting and editing in PDF format, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is still the most powerful PDF editing software for Mac out there. If you need to edit PDF documents after scanning, or sign and send them instantly, there is still no better application than Adobe’s Acrobat Pro.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of how Adobe Acrobat Pro DC compares with its closest rival ABBYY Finereader Pro For Mac.

Finereader Pro vs Acrobat Pro DC

On it’s own, Adobe Acrobat Pro costs $14.99 per month. Adobe Acrobat Standard DC is slightly cheaper at $12.99 per month but there is no Mac version of it – it’s Windows only. Adobe does not provide telephone support for Acrobat Pro but it does offer user forums and online live chat support.

If you use other Adobe products however, it makes more economic sense to subscribe to the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite. A subscription to Creative Cloud costs $49.99 but includes access to all of Adobe’s industry leading apps such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro.

Students and teachers get 60% off the entire Adobe Creative Cloud suite.

You can also try a free trial of Adobe Acrobat Pro to judge it for yourself.

Pros:

Excellent PDF editing and customization features

Integrated with rest of Adobe Creative Cloud suite

Cons:

OCR scanning not as accurate as ABBYY Finereader Pro

Not a dedicated OCR tool

Subscription pricing model

3. Readiris Pro

Readiris Pro is one of the most established OCR programs on the market. It was originally designed for Windows only but more recently has launched a version for macOS.

Readiris is a powerful OCR app that can scan an impressive 130 different languages. Scanning with Readiris Pro is extremely accurate although less accurate than ABBYY on low resolution documents.

One of Readiris Pro’s strengths is that you can choose to export scans directly to a wide number of applications such as Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, Pages, Numbers, Word, Excel, Evernote, Outlook and even iTunes. You can also covert OCR scans to audio book AIFF and eBook formats.

The exported document also preserves formatting extremely well so that it looks exactly the same as the original.

Readiris Pro is easy to use, allowing you to easily add or delete pages and drag and drop formatting any way you want.

Readiris also allows you to save documents to online services Box, SharePoint and OneDrive.

Readiris Pro is a specialized OCR software that focuses on getting scans right. It’s quite pricey however and you’ll need to Business version to avoid annoying limitations.

Readiris Pro is limited to importing 50 pages at once. Readiris Business allows unlimited pages at once and supports automatic file conversion but it costs $199 compared to $99 for the Pro version.

You can watch ReadIris Pro in action.

You can also sign-up for a free trial of Readiris for Mac.

Pros:

Very accurate scanning

Exports to a wide range of applications

Good format preservation

Cons:

Requires expensive Business edition to avoid OCR limitations

Doesn’t edit PDFs

4. Prizmo

Prizmo is a basic but very respectable OCR app for macOS. Prizmo does a partcularly good job on black and white documents and can handle images if they’re in high resolution.

Prizmo supports an impressive 23 different languages thanks to an extensive neural network.

Although Prizmo supports multiple languages however, you can only scan in one language mode which may be a problem for those scanning documents that aren’t just in English.

It’s also not very good at handling articles in a low resolution which is often one of the things that separates more expensive OCR software from budget alternatives such as Prizmo. You’ll need to make sure that any documents you scan with Prizmo are above around 200 dpi to get acceptable results.

Prizmo supports Handoff which means that if you take a photo of a document with the Prizmo iOS app for iPhone or iPad, you can access it in Prizmo straight away which is far more convenient than having to use a scanner.

Prizmo also has an OCR extension which can plug into macOS and allows you to OCR directly from within Finder any document or image you have open on your desktop.

Prizmo is available in a Standard ($49.99) and Pro ($74.99) version. The Pro version offers more language support, OCR batch processing of multiple documents in one go, Automator support and custom export scripts. You can see more on the differences here.

There is a free demo version of Prizmo which has no time limit but when you export a file, there is a watermark installed and some characters are omitted in business cards.

You can also see the sort of accuracy you can expect from Prizmo by checking the results gallery.

Pros:

Includes voice support to read PDFs to you

Syncs with an iOS app for photo scanning

Cons:

Accuracy can be hit and miss

No Microsoft Office export support

5. PDFpen

PDFpen is a powerful but user friendly PDF conversion and editing software that performs OCR scans of documents. PDFpen will mainly appeal to users that are looking for a cheaper version of Adobe Acrobat Pro as it’s main focus is PDF conversion and editing.

The accuracy of PDFpen is nevertheless very good as it uses the OmniPage OCR engine which is widely acclaimed for its scanning accuracy although the OmniPage app itself only works on Windows. Note however that if you’re scanning confidential documents, the OmniPage OCR engine is cloud based and all documents scanned in PDFpen will be uploaded to the OmniPage server.

When you open a PDF document in PDFpen, it automatically asks you whether you want to perform an OCR scan and in which language.

Simply click on “OCR Page” or OCR Document to start the scan. When the scan is complete, PDFpen overlays the text it has recognized which gives you the chance to edit any mistakes.

When done, you can then edit, annotate, search, copy and paste text from the PDF document.

Alternatively, you can export PDFs to Microsoft Word DOCX format for editing.

To help optimize documents for OCR scanning accuracy, PDFpen also has a useful “Deskew and Adjust Image” tool which straightens the image and adjusts image contrast and exposure.

Other useful features in PDFpen including the ability to digitally sign PDFs with your trackpad or mouse, scan documents using your iPad or iPhone and re-order and merge PDFs on your Mac.

PDFpen is generally fast and for those that regularly need to edit and convert PDF documents, it’s a good budget alternative to Adobe Acrobat Pro.

PDFpen costs $74.95 although there’s also PDFpen Pro for $124.95 which includes added features such as Microsoft Excel export support, ability to create and edit forms and turn websites into PDF. PDFpen support is via email only.

You can also download a free trial of PDFpen.

There’s also an PDFpen iOS app and you can see how they compare here.

Pros:

Allows you to edit PDFs directly

Exports to Microsoft Word

Cheaper than Adobe Acrobat Pro

Cons:

OCR engine uploads documents online

Accuracy not great with images

6. OCRKit

OCRKit is a no-nonsense, easy to use and very effective open source OCR tool that also popular on Windows. Note that although OCRKit is based on open source OCR technology, it’s a commercial product which costs $29.99.

OCRKIt is ideal if you just want to turn a PDF into a searchable PDF, RTF, HTML or TXT document. It’s easy to use, fast and supports long documents and batch processing.

Apart from PDFs, you can also scan images in TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, PNM, BMP, PCX, GIF and OpenEXR formats.

OCRKit supports batch OCR scanning via macOS Automator and the accuracy is surprisingly good no matter what the condition or resolution of the original document.

Using OCRKit couldn’t be easier. Simply drag or drop any PDF, TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, PNG, PNM, BMP, PCX, GIF or OpenEXR document into the OCRKit Dock icon or interface and it will prepare it for scanning.

Select a file name to save the OCR document to:

OCRKit is surprisingly fast even with documents over 100 pages and within a few seconds, it will display the searchable document:

There are a few other nice touches to OCRKit. The automatic rotation tool detects the orientation of each document automatically so you don’t need to manually organize a stack before scanning – very useful if you’re scanning multiple documents that aren’t organized very well.

OCRKit will also automatically detect most major languages which is very useful if you’re scanning documents in more than one language.

One other useful feature is that OCRKit is also integrated with Pages (Apple’s alternative to Microsoft Word) meaning you can drag a finished OCR document into Pages to edit it. However, it doesn’t work for converting a PDF to edit in Microsoft Word.

If you’re looking for an easy, inexpensive but surprisingly powerful Mac OCR tool that preserves formatting in PDFs, OCRKit is an impressive tool.

OCRKit costs a very reasonable $29.99 which is excellent value considering the results you get.

Pros:

Decent OCR accuracy

Support batches of documents

Cons:

Very basic interface

Doesn’t export to MS Word

7. DEVONthink Pro Office

DEVONthink Pro Office is aimed at those that want to go completely paperless in their home or office. The developer DEVONthink only makes software for Mac and iOS and so all of its products are tailored for Macs.

DEVONthink Pro Office is ideal for small businesses that want to automatically OCR everything that comes in and goes out to reduce paperwork.

The OCR engine in DEVONthink Pro Office is actually the same as the one used in ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac. ABBYY license their OCR engine to integrate into other products and so in terms of accuracy, it’s very similar to ABBYY.

All documents you upload to DEVONthink Pro Office whether on your Mac or iOS device are automatically synced and OCR scanned by DEVONthink Pro Office.

DEVONthink Pro Office intelligently files your documents based on how you previously filed similar documents. You can then search and retrieve these documents easily similar to the way you can search and retrieve emails in an email client.

You can also tag and group documents manually enabling you to keep everything far better organized digitally than having piles of paper documents.

DEVONthink Pro Office is more of a document organizer than a dedicated OCR solution so there are fewer OCR features but lots of document organization, syncing and filing tools.

If your main aim of using OCR is to go paperless, DEVONthink Pro Office is a powerful solution to make PDFs searchable and organize your documents.

Note that DEVONthink Pro Office ($149.95) is the only DEVONthink product with OCR capabilities. DEVONthink Pro ($79.95) is more limited and only the Office version includes OCR, professional email archiving and a web server for team collaboration. DEVONthink Pro for Mac support is via email only but there are support forums too.

There’s also a free trial of DEVONthink Pro Office so you test drive it yourself.

Pros:

Excellent tool to go paperless at home or in the office

Syncs with the iOS app

Cons:

Focused more on document organization than OCR

8. VueScan Pro

Have you got a document scanner but the OCR software included with it doesn’t work very well?

If so, VueScan Pro for Mac could be for you. VueScan is a flatbed scanning OCR software that works with virtually all brands of scanners new and old. The default language for VueScan Pro is English but you can download language packs for another 32 languages.

VueScan does a very crude job of scanning text in a document or image and dumps it into a text file with no formatting but if you simply need to extract text from a scanned document, it does the job.

To create an OCR text file with Vuescan, make sure you’ve purchased the Professional version ($99) not the Standard version ($39.95) which which doesn’t support OCR. Also ensure that your scanner is connected to your Mac and to perform an OCR scan, make sure the “Input” tab is selected and then change the “Options” field to “Professional”. Then in the “Output” tab, simply select “OCR Output File”. Click “Scan” and then “View” to see the outputted text. The results won’t be perfect and you’ll have a lot of cleaning up to do but it’s definitely quicker than typing an entire document.

If you’re not bothered about formatting and just want a way to extract text from documents in a document scanner, VueScan Pro is an effective way to enhance the OCR capabilities of your document scanner.

Pros:

Enables your flatbed document scanner to OCR documents

Extracts text from documents

Cons:

Only useful for dumping text into a text file

9. Picatext

Picatext is an ultra basic and budget OCR app to simply scan and dump text from images. If you just want to extract text from screenshots for example, it’s a very good option. It does not support PDFs though.

Picatext is generally surprisingly good at extracting text from images or screenshots and supports over 40 languages. It does struggle with lower resolution images however and with font styles such as italics.

Picatext can only handle one image at a time making it fine for one-off or occasional OCR scanning needs.

Simply drag and drop documents into Picatext or access it from the Menu Bar. If you choose the Menu Bar option, Picatext shows a mini preview of the document and allows you to select all or part of the document that you want to scan.

Alternatively, you can access Picatext via hotkey combination TRL-CMD-ALT-P. Any text that extracted by Picatext is automatically copied to your clipboard when done.

For those that need an OCR app for images or screenshots on a very limited budget, Picatext is definitely worth a try at just $3.99.

Pros:

Good at extracting text from images

Quick and easy to use from Menu Bar

Cons:

No PDF support

Very basic

Only suitable for images

10. Condense

Condense is a cheap but effective German OCR app suitable for simple text dumps. If you just want to extract a paragraph or a few lines of text or code from a PDF or image on your desktop, it does an excellent job.

Note that Condense does not preserve any type of formatting – it’s very much a “churn and burn” tool for extracting text.

Condense supports 35 different languages and is generally a very quick, easy and effective solution for dumping text into file.

Condense sits in your Menu Bar and all you need to to do is select the “Scan” option and use the cross-hairs to select the text you want to scan. We found you need to zoom into a document as much as possible in order to get decent results.

Best Voice To Text Software

Condense also has a handy “QuickFix” tool which can correct badly scanned text.

If you want a fast and convenient tool to extract text from images and PDFs on your Mac, Condense is a snip at just $4.99.

Pros:

Cheap, easy and fast text dumps

Supports PDF scanning

Cons:

Doesn’t edit PDFs

Poor accuracy depending on document

Conclusion

OCR technology on Mac has come a long way over the past ten years. ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac now produces results just as good as the PC version and is the best Mac OCR software for accuracy, speed, format preservation and ease of use.

If on the other hand you need features like digital signing of PDFs and you already use other Adobe products, Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is still the PDF market leader.

Is There Any Free OCR Software On Mac?

There are some free OCR solutions that Mac users can use but they’re not very good and they’re mainly online. One of the better ones is the open source Tesseract project which is a text recognizer engine sponsored by Google. Unfortunately, there’s no official user interface as it’s designed mainly for programmers to integrate into their own apps and software but there are projects like PDF OCR X which are based on it. The accuracy of Tesseract is pretty good but it can only dump text into a file and like most free solutions, it doesn’t preserve the formatting of documents.

Advantages Of OCR Technology

Best Voice To Text Software For Mac 2018 Football

There are many reasons for using OCR tools to make life easier. Here’s a few of the benefits of using the apps featured here.

• Save Time: One of the main benefits is that it saves you lots of time having to retype text that is saved in either PDF documents or images such as business cards, receipts and bills. OCR technology has come a long way in recent years and now the best apps can not only extract text from images and PDFs, but even preserve document formatting, layouts, colors and fonts. These OCR apps also allow you to take a photo of a document with your mobile and then use your Mac to OCR it instantly. Rather than tediously retyping pages of text, these scans can be done in a matter of seconds. Educators for example can save considerable time retyping text and copying images from textbooks or turning paper based materials into digital form for use in class or sharing with colleagues.
• Edit, Update, Scan & Extract Text: OCR scanning allows you to “unlock” text in images or PDF files that you can’t normally edit. After converting, you can edit or update, scan and extract text from a document that wasn’t possible before. Once a document or image has been processed, you can search it, copy and paste it into other documents or edit it and fax it from your Mac for example. Professionals that can particularly benefit from OCR utilities are those such as lawyers with reams of documentation and evidence they need to be able to search and quote quickly or academics that need to catalog and search piles of studies and research.
• Reduce Paperwork: It allows you to go paperless in the home or office by creating an archive of PDF files that you can search and retrieve at anytime. This improves organization and helps you locate this quicker than having to go through reams of paperwork.
• Create eBooks: If you want to read a document on the move on your Kindle or other eBook device, many OCR programs allow you to export documents to ePUB or FB2 format.
• Text-To-Speech Apps: Once a document has been scanned, you can access them via text-to-speech apps and tools. If you want to search a document for keyword for example using Siri, you can use just say the word and find what you’re looking for quicker.

If you have any problems and questions with any of apps featured here or have any suggestions, let us know in the comments below.

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Best Voice Recognition Software For Mac 2018

From the standpoint of someone recording 20 or 30 years ago, a DAW today is like a giant candy store; it's as if you can do almost anything. For the newcomer, though, it may seem almost hopelessly complex. Choosing the right audio software can be quite difficult. Most of the famous packages like Pro Tools and Logic have been around for decades. They've grown incredibly powerful, and as a result have user interfaces that are as complex as…well, professional mix consoles.

So how to decide? To help with this task, we went out and tested the most popular DAWs. Numerous venerable (and excellent) recording magazines have reviewed these applications many times over the years. That's great for the existing user base of each DAW, but maybe not always quite as clear for newcomers. In each of our reviews, we did our best to approach each product as a whole, rather than devoting the majority of the space to just the latest features that were added in the most recent point update.

Before we get to the specifics, the simplest program for audio editing is a two-track editor; probably the most famous example here is the free Audacity. While Audacity aspires to some extremely basic multitrack recording with overdubs, its real use is as a solid stereo editor. If you're recording a podcast or editing a clip of your kid's piano recital that you recorded on your phone, Audacity is an excellent choice; you can probably start and stop there. If you need something more sophisticated, read on.

It helps to think about the kinds of projects you want to create. Are you planning on producing beats for hip-hop or fully electronic compositions? Do you want to record multiple musicians playing live instruments at once? Will you be using your setup to score for picture, or creating sound effects and dialogue for TV and video games? Do you need to produce fully polished, printed scores, or otherwise prefer to work with musical notes and staves? Do you plan on tuning the pitch of vocal performances? Working out the answers to these kinds of questions up front will help you narrow down your choices.

What Comes With Each DAW?

Best Voice To Text Software For Mac 2018 Collections

The good news is all of the packages can we tested can more or less do all of the above tasks, with a few notable exceptions. The trick is that each program has strengths in different areas, and some tasks may be a bit more complicated in one than they are in another. One overarching rule to decide faster is to look at what your colleagues or friends are using, and then choose the same package. That makes it easier to share tips or even projects between each other, rather than being the lone person using a particular product and then introducing session import issues.

Another is to look at what's bundled with each program. Would you prefer a DAW that comes with a ton of virtual instrument sounds, such as synthesizers, sampled violins, guitars, and electric basses? You may want to look at something like Logic Pro X, Cubase Pro, or Studio One, all of which include many gigabytes of sounds and loops. Do you have or plan to buy your own instrument plug-ins you want to use? Reaper is a fully stripped down DAW at an excellent price, and it makes an excellent host for third-party VSTs. It's also great if you're recording a band full of live instruments and don't need much in the way of virtual ones. Do your tastes lean toward the electronic and synthesized realm? FL Studio, Reason, and Ableton Live are inspired choices with plenty of built-in synths, though you can produce electronic music with just about any of these programs.

Often, it comes down to the details and the editing philosophies. Do you prefer pattern-based recording for electronic music? FL Studio is going to have plenty to offer. Would you rather have a 'do-it-all' DAW with a large built-in sound library at a low price? PreSonus Studio One beckons. Do you want to not just be able to bring projects into major studios, but collaborate online and also open sessions directly as you work on them with others? It's impossible to top Avid's Pro Tools for this. Is the music already done, and you work in post-production and want to produce more professional podcasts or videos? Adobe Audition is a prime contender for these tasks. And if you've got a Mac, it's worth giving the free GarageBand a spin, if only because it's more powerful than it ever was and you already own it.

How Much Do You Want to Spend?

Closely correlated to the bundled instruments and effects is price, and that's a factor that can cloud the issue a bit. Many of the top-tier packages also have less expensive (or even free), feature-limited editions available. It's not as simple as saying 'Reaper is a budget DAW at $60 and Studio One 3 is a professional-level DAW at $399,' because you can also buy the stripped-down (but still pretty feature-rich) Studio One Artist for $99. What do you lose? What do you gain? We try and touch on this as much as possible within each review.

Which DAW Is Right for You?

In short, read our reviews (linked below) and try some demos where you can. But otherwise, don't sweat it too much. We spent countless hours testing these products and putting together both the reviews and this guide. Despite the complexity of the software here, we've found it's honestly tough to go wrong. It's not like computers or cameras, where you can clearly see that of the latest crop of products, a few perform well and a few don't perform as well as the leaders. These are all mature, well-established products, each with thousands of fans.

As a result, more than half of the packages in this roundup score at least four out of five stars. You can get professional-level results with all of them. Each has some specific workflows that work really, really well for some people—hence the endless 'X is the best and Y is garbage' arguments on the internet—but they all can work for just about anyone.

Even so, we single out two DAWs, one on the Mac and one on the PC, for Editors' Choice awards: Apple Logic Pro X, for its absolutely unbeatable value with its built-in instruments and effects plug-ins, and Avid Pro Tools, for its seamless audio editing and suitability up and down the pro studio chain. But we'd happily use any of the programs listed below for new projects. Choose one, learn its secrets, and get to work creating and editing amazing music and audio projects.

Best Audio Editing Software Featured in This Roundup:

• Avid Pro Tools Review

  
  MSRP: $599.00
  

  Pros: Still the cleanest audio editing workflow on the planet. Fast 64-bit recording and mixing engine. New cloud-based project collaboration tools. Robust, useful track freeze and commit options. High-end hardware and support policies are tops in the industry.

  Cons: Lacks built-in pitch correction. No VST plug-in support or instrument track presets. USB dongle-based copy protection. Monthly fee required for new software patches past 12 months.

  Bottom Line: Avid stays the course with Pro Tools and maintains its status as the standard cross-platform solution for professional audio editing work for music, film, games, and broadcast.

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• Image-Line FL Studio Review

  
  MSRP: $299.00
  

  Pros: Vector-based interface is attractively animated, and supports 4K, multi-monitor, and multitouch configurations. Brilliant loop and pattern-based MIDI composition tools. Visible automation clips are easy to manipulate. Light memory footprint. Free lifetime updates.

  Cons: Convoluted, inflexible audio recording (in higher-priced versions). Must manually assign instrument tracks to mixer channels. Built-in sound library could use some updating. Lacks notation editor.

  Bottom Line: If you want to produce some of today's slickest beats, right up to full electronic dance music tracks, FL Studio could be the ideal key to unlock your creativity.

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• Adobe Audition CC Review

  
  MSRP: $20.99
  

  Pros: Strong audio-restoration, sound-removal, and noise-reduction tools. Excellent stereo waveform editor. Useful visualization tools. Adheres to film and television broadcast standards for audio.

  Cons: Lacks MIDI support. Only available via an expensive monthly subscription.

  Bottom Line: Audition is a comprehensive audio editor for video post-production, podcasts, and audio restoration. It's expensive for what you get, though, and makes the most sense as a supplement to a video editor or as part of an existing CC subscription.

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• Steinberg Cubase Pro Review

  
  MSRP: $559.99
  

  Pros: Comprehensive editing and automation support. Robust plug-in bundle. Powerful mixer. Rock-solid stability.

  Cons: Expensive. Dongle-based hardware copy protection.

  Bottom Line: Steinberg Cubase Pro is a top-notch digital audio workstation particularly suited to MIDI and virtual instrument composers.

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• Ableton Live Review

  
  MSRP: $749.00
  

  Pros: Inspirational clip-based live and composition workflow. Fast navigation. Powerful automation. Suite version contains plenty of sample material to work with.

  Cons: No track comping. No notation view. No pitch correction tool. Mixer view could be more robust.

  Bottom Line: In its latest iteration, Ableton Live is a powerful all-in-the-box solution for composing music, particularly electronic-influenced, but it's not for everyone.

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• PreSonus Studio One Review

  
  MSRP: $399.00
  

  Pros: Fast workflow for music composition and audio recording. Robust included sound sets. Attractive drag-and-drop interface. Powerful free version. Multitouch-enabled on the Windows side.

  Cons: No notation editor. No easy way to import session data or save I/O templates. MIDI editing is still weaker than the competition. Cluttered mixing console.

  Bottom Line: PreSonus reinvented the common digital audio workstation in 2008 with Studio One; the latest version is the most inspired yet.

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• Propellerhead Reason Review

  
  MSRP: $399.00
  

  Pros: Versatile array of bundled instruments. Awesome sound set serves as instant inspiration for new electronic tracks. Fast composition workflow. SSL-style mix compression and EQ.

  Cons: Aging rackmount-and-patch-cable UI idiom. No surround or scoring features. Track editing still lags the competition.

  Bottom Line: Despite its flaws, it's tough to knock Reason as an all-in-one recording, mixing, and mastering tool, particularly if you're into electronic or hip-hop music and want a tremendous array of sounds and beats right out of the gate. It's still as much fun to use as it has always been.

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• Cockos Reaper Review

  
  MSRP: $60.00
  

  Pros: Multi-channel audio recording, mixing, and mastering at a bargain price. Heavily customizable. Fast. Extremely light memory footprint.

  Cons: No built-in instruments or loops. Uninviting, unintuitive interface.

  Bottom Line: Reaper offers nearly all of the features and flexibility, if not the ease of use or visual appeal, of powerhouse digital audio workstations like Pro Tools at a fraction of the cost.

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• Apple Logic Pro X (for Mac) Review

  
  MSRP: $199.99
  

  Pros: Excellent value. Stunning array of bundled instruments and effects. Terrific interface. No copy protection, unlike many competitors.

  Cons: A few older plug-ins still need a UI makeover.

  Bottom Line: Apple Logic Pro X 10.4 is a tremendous update to an already-excellent digital audio workstation, and if you own Logic Pro X, it's free.

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• Audacity Review

  
  MSRP: $0.00
  

  Pros: Free. Lots of editing options ideal for dialogue, sound effects, and trimming music tracks. Supports multitrack audio and batch processing.

  Cons: Destructive editing only. Multitrack audio support is exceedingly basic.

  Bottom Line: If you're looking to get started in podcasting or recording music, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity is still the go-to choice for quick-and-dirty audio work.

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