PSA: How to grab text from an image

 Every so often... 

Pieces of paper falling from the sky. P/C by Gemini.

... I find myself with an image that contains a bunch of text.  If it's short, I'll just type it into my notes.  I'm a reasonably fast typist, so it's not a problem.  

But then I get images with a lot of text, or very specific text with a lot of special characters (e.g., URLs or fragments of code), and I really would rather just copy/paste the text out of the image.  

Here's a short list of ways to do this.  Should this happen to you, learn one of these methods and make it a quick/easy thing to do.  Hope you find this useful in your own SRS work: 

1. Use your image clipping tool's grab text feature.  I happen to use Snagit as my image grab tool of choice.  When I see an image with text, I grab the image and then use SnagIt's "Grab Text" tool (Edit>Grab Text) to copy the text out of the image.  Here's an example.  This is an image of a text page from one of Ethan Mollick's LinkedIn posts.  As you can see, this is just long enough that I'd rather grab it than type it.  

Then, grabbing the text is a click away: 

It's then copy/pasteable. Most (modern) image screencapture tools have something like this.  If yours doesn't, consider changing to one that does.  

2. (Mac) Use Preview.  If you open an image with text in the Preview app, use the Text Selection tool (Tools>Text Selection). After you select the text, you can CMD+C to copy it, then paste anywhere.  

3. (Windows) Use the Snipping tool to do the same thing. (Here's a handy video showing you how.)  

4. (iPhone) Use the text grab tool.  When you take an image with text on it, use the tool in the lower right of the image area (looks like lines of text surrounded by a rounded-edge fence).   

This is especially handy when traveling in another country when you can take a pic, then click on the "copy text" tool.  

Then swipe over the text you want to copy (or translate) with your finger: 

And then translate, copy, or lookup as you wish: 

5. (Android) Use the text grab tool.  When you take an image with text on it, Android gives a large button that says "Copy text from image" (see below).  You can also click on the "Lens" option to grab the text as well.    

I had to look this up the other day to get a particular job done--and this PSA might help you avoid the same search.  

Keep searching.