text on a photo - to - editable text

[Accountable]

I haven't figured out how to google what I need so I need your help.

My old scanner would scan text into a PDF with text that I can copy into a word processor & edit. So naturally I thought all scanners did that. I was wrong. My new scanner - and the scanner at work - scans a document just like a photo.

Is there a free bit of software out there that can take the text in a photo and make it editable text?

 

[The Man]

You sure there aren't settings for scanning the last two scanners I have gotten give the option of how one wants to save the scan....have you dug around all the settings?

 

[Accountable]

Yeh. The one at work is one of those big Xerox copiers with all the bells & whistles, so you'd think it could do OCR. It has an option to choose photo, text, or mixed, but it only seems to change the quality of the picture.

I found a pain in the as workaround. I can use another free app to change the pdf to jpg, then use the OCR freeware I found to read that, but that takes so long I could damn near type the whole thing myself faster.