How to convert a scanned document into text with location in Java using OCR

Optical character recognition (OCR) makes extracting text from images into a breeze. Setting up such a system from scratch, on the other hand, is rather time consuming. Thankfully, there is another option available, which we will be exploring today: APIs. Today we will be employing one to begin using OCR in just a few minutes.

Let us begin by adding references to our Maven POM file, which will then be used to dynamically compile the library we need using Jitpack.

Repository reference:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>jitpack.io</id>
        <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

Dependency reference:

<dependencies>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.Cloudmersive</groupId>
    <artifactId>Cloudmersive.APIClient.Java</artifactId>
    <version>v2.75</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>

And our final step, call imageOcrImageLinesWithLocation with the following code:

// Import classes:
//import com.cloudmersive.client.invoker.ApiClient;
//import com.cloudmersive.client.invoker.ApiException;
//import com.cloudmersive.client.invoker.Configuration;
//import com.cloudmersive.client.invoker.auth.*;
//import com.cloudmersive.client.ImageOcrApi;
ApiClient defaultClient = Configuration.getDefaultApiClient();
// Configure API key authorization: Apikey
ApiKeyAuth Apikey = (ApiKeyAuth) defaultClient.getAuthentication("Apikey");
Apikey.setApiKey("YOUR API KEY");
// Uncomment the following line to set a prefix for the API key, e.g. "Token" (defaults to null)
//Apikey.setApiKeyPrefix("Token");
ImageOcrApi apiInstance = new ImageOcrApi();
File imageFile = new File("/path/to/file"); // File | Image file to perform OCR on.  Common file formats such as PNG, JPEG are supported.
String language = "language_example"; // String | Optional, language of the input document, default is English (ENG).  Possible values are ENG (English), ARA (Arabic), ZHO (Chinese - Simplified), ZHO-HANT (Chinese - Traditional), ASM (Assamese), AFR (Afrikaans), AMH (Amharic), AZE (Azerbaijani), AZE-CYRL (Azerbaijani - Cyrillic), BEL (Belarusian), BEN (Bengali), BOD (Tibetan), BOS (Bosnian), BUL (Bulgarian), CAT (Catalan; Valencian), CEB (Cebuano), CES (Czech), CHR (Cherokee), CYM (Welsh), DAN (Danish), DEU (German), DZO (Dzongkha), ELL (Greek), ENM (Archaic/Middle English), EPO (Esperanto), EST (Estonian), EUS (Basque), FAS (Persian), FIN (Finnish), FRA (French), FRK (Frankish), FRM (Middle-French), GLE (Irish), GLG (Galician), GRC (Ancient Greek), HAT (Hatian), HEB (Hebrew), HIN (Hindi), HRV (Croatian), HUN (Hungarian), IKU (Inuktitut), IND (Indonesian), ISL (Icelandic), ITA (Italian), ITA-OLD (Old - Italian), JAV (Javanese), JPN (Japanese), KAN (Kannada), KAT (Georgian), KAT-OLD (Old-Georgian), KAZ (Kazakh), KHM (Central Khmer), KIR (Kirghiz), KOR (Korean), KUR (Kurdish), LAO (Lao), LAT (Latin), LAV (Latvian), LIT (Lithuanian), MAL (Malayalam), MAR (Marathi), MKD (Macedonian), MLT (Maltese), MSA (Malay), MYA (Burmese), NEP (Nepali), NLD (Dutch), NOR (Norwegian), ORI (Oriya), PAN (Panjabi), POL (Polish), POR (Portuguese), PUS (Pushto), RON (Romanian), RUS (Russian), SAN (Sanskrit), SIN (Sinhala), SLK (Slovak), SLV (Slovenian), SPA (Spanish), SPA-OLD (Old Spanish), SQI (Albanian), SRP (Serbian), SRP-LAT (Latin Serbian), SWA (Swahili), SWE (Swedish), SYR (Syriac), TAM (Tamil), TEL (Telugu), TGK (Tajik), TGL (Tagalog), THA (Thai), TIR (Tigrinya), TUR (Turkish), UIG (Uighur), UKR (Ukrainian), URD (Urdu), UZB (Uzbek), UZB-CYR (Cyrillic Uzbek), VIE (Vietnamese), YID (Yiddish)
String preprocessing = "preprocessing_example"; // String | Optional, preprocessing mode, default is 'Auto'.  Possible values are None (no preprocessing of the image), and Auto (automatic image enhancement of the image before OCR is applied; this is recommended).
try {
ImageToLinesWithLocationResult result = apiInstance.imageOcrImageLinesWithLocation(imageFile, language, preprocessing);
System.out.println(result);
} catch (ApiException e) {
System.err.println("Exception when calling ImageOcrApi#imageOcrImageLinesWithLocation");
e.printStackTrace();
}

Notice that you may include the language of the document for enhanced accuracy. Our results will be given in this format:

{
  "Successful": true,
  "Words": [
    {
      "WordText": "string",
      "LineNumber": 0,
      "WordNumber": 0,
      "XLeft": 0,
      "YTop": 0,
      "Width": 0,
      "Height": 0,
      "ConfidenceLevel": 0,
      "BlockNumber": 0,
      "ParagraphNumber": 0,
      "PageNumber": 0
    }
  ]
}

I would point out that this function is designed for scanned images. If you would like to perform OCR on images taken with a camera, it is better to use imageOcrPhotoToText instead.