O · OCR · observability

OCR

Optical Character Recognition — extracting machine-readable text from images and scans.

In one sentence

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the technology that extracts machine-readable text from images, scanned PDFs or photos, so the result can be indexed and retrieved.

When it matters

When the source documents are scanned manuals (typical in older industrial verticals): no OCR = no retrieval.

A real-world example

helpcode auto-OCRs every scanned PDF on upload; a 1960s lift schematic becomes searchable text in seconds.

Curated by helpcode research team · Last reviewed 2026-05-22