How Cove Uses OCR to Help You Find Documents in Seconds

Have you ever searched for a file for hours in vain? Or copied text from an image by manually typing it? Or had trouble organising your documents? Well, if your answer to any of these questions is yes, then Cove Identity’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature might just be the solution you are looking for.

You might be wondering what OCR is? Well, OCR is a technology that allows machines to recognise printed or handwritten text characters in an image or document and convert them into machine-readable text. To put it simply, this technology is used to digitise documents, books, and other printed materials, enabling them to be stored, edited, and searched electronically. 

It works by analysing the shape and pattern of the characters in the image and then matching them to a database of known characters. OCR is widely used in various industries, including banking, healthcare, and publishing, to improve productivity, reduce errors, and enhance data accuracy. 

‍Cove Identity’s Android and iOS app has built-in OCR templates that organise documents powerfully by allowing users to add additional details, search easily, and copy important details without any hassle.

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‍How OCR Works

As mentioned earlier, OCR works by using algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyse an image or document and identify the individual characters within it. Here is a simplified explanation of how this technology works:

1. Pre-processing: The image or document is first processed to improve its quality and make it easier for the OCR software to read. This may involve tasks like image cropping, noise reduction, and image enhancement.
2. Character segmentation: The OCR software then breaks the image into individual characters, separating them from each other and identifying their boundaries.
3. Character recognition: The software then analyses each character, comparing it to a database of known characters to identify it. This is done using pattern recognition algorithms and machine learning techniques.
4. Post-processing: Finally, the OCR software refines its output by correcting errors, verifying that the recognised text makes sense in the context of the document, and applying formatting and other text processing tasks.

The accuracy of OCR can be affected by various factors such as the quality of the input image or document, the clarity of the text, the font used, and the complexity of the layout. OCR software can be trained to recognise specific fonts or handwriting styles, which can improve its accuracy for specific tasks.

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Use of OCR in Document Organisation

OCR is very useful for organising documents, especially for large volumes of paper documents. Here are some of the ways it can be used in document organisation:

1. Document indexing: OCR can be used to extract text from documents and create an index that makes it easy to search for and retrieve specific files.
2. Document search: With OCR, documents can be searched based on the text they contain, making it easier to find specific information in a large volume of documents.
3. Metadata extraction: OCR can be used to extract metadata from documents, such as the author, date created, and keywords, making it easier to categorise and organise them.
4. Document classification: OCR can be used to classify documents based on their content, making it easier to organise them into different categories or folders.
5. Document summarisation: OCR can be used to automatically summarise the contents of documents, making it easier to quickly review and understand large volumes of text.
6. Data extraction: OCR can be used to extract specific data from forms, such as names, addresses, and phone numbers, and then organise that data into a database or spreadsheet.

Overall, OCR can help people improve their document organisation by making it easier to search, retrieve, and manage large volumes of paper documents.

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Cove Identity’s OCR technology offers all these, making the search and retrieval of documents or data smoother than ever before. Some of the primary advantages to using Cove Identity's OCR are:

• Lesser time consumption 
• Reduced errors
• Minimum effort
• Allows actions that would not be possible on paper documents. Including but not limited to compressing data into ZIP files, highlighting keywords, etc.

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Download the app on iOS or Android to know more and benefit from this incredible technology.

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