10 OCR Tips That Actually Work (We Tested Them)

Let’s be honest, OCR can be frustrating. We’ve spent countless hours scanning everything from coffee-stained receipts to historical documents, learning what works (and what definitely doesn’t). Here’s what we wish someone had told us when we started.

1. Good Photos Beat Bad Scans Every Time

That fancy scanner in your office? It’s not always the answer. Sometimes your phone camera does a better job, especially if you:

• Get close enough that text fills most of the frame
• Find good lighting (natural light is your friend)
• Hold steady - blurry photos are OCR’s worst enemy
• Shoot straight on - no weird angles

Real talk: We once processed a handwritten note photographed on a bumpy train ride. LeapOCR still nailed it because the lighting was good.

2. Format Isn’t Just for Tech Geeks

Different documents need different formats:

• PDF for multi-page documents you want to keep together
• PNG when you need crystal-clear text (screenshots, digital docs)
• JPEG for real-world document photos (it handles compression better)
• TIFF if you’re archiving something important (but file sizes get huge fast)

We only support PDF for now. and are working on supporting more formats soon.

3. Clean It Up Before You Process

Five minutes of preprocessing saves hours of headaches:

• Zap that background noise
• Crank up the contrast so text pops
• Straighten crooked pages (even slightly tilted ones confuse OCR)
• Crop out the junk - margins, holes, coffee stains

4. Tell It What Language It’s Reading

This sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people forget. LeapOCR speaks 50+ languages and can guess if you’re not sure, but telling it “this is Spanish” makes everything 10x more accurate.

5. Multi-Column Layouts Need Love

Newspapers, research papers, magazines - they’re OCR traps because:

• The AI doesn’t know which column comes first
• Text flows weirdly across columns
• Headers and footers confuse everything

Pro tip: Process each column separately if you can. Your future self will thank you.

6. White Backgrounds Are Your Best Friend

Busy backgrounds = OCR nightmares. We learned this the hard way with a client’s branded invoices that had watermarks everywhere. Clean, simple backgrounds win every time.

7. Size Actually Matters

Tiny text is impossible to read, even for AI. If you’re squinting, the OCR is definitely struggling. Aim for text that’s comfortably readable - think 12pt font or larger.

8. Use the Right AI for the Job

Here’s where LeapOCR shines. Our AI isn’t one-size-fits-all:

• Standard documents get our general model (fast, accurate)
• Handwriting gets specialized treatment (we’ve trained on thousands of samples)
• Tables get structure-aware processing (no more jumbled spreadsheet data)
• Forms get field extraction (perfect for applications, surveys)

But here’s the magic: you can literally tell our AI what to look for. “Find the invoice number, total amount, and due date” - and it will. Even from a crumpled receipt photo you took in a dark restaurant.

For the really tough stuff (think grandma’s recipe cards, faded historical documents), our higher-end models use deeper neural networks. They’re slower but worth it for the accuracy boost.

9. Trust But Verify

Even the best OCR makes mistakes. Always double-check:

• Numbers (especially financial data)
• Names and addresses
• Dates and times

LeapOCR gives you confidence scores - use them! Anything below 90% deserves a human look.

10. Batch Like Documents Together

Processing 50 invoices? Do them all at once. Our AI learns from the batch and gets more accurate with each document. Plus, it’s way faster than one-by-one processing.

The Real Secret

After processing thousands of documents, here’s what we’ve learned: good OCR is 80% preparation, 20% processing. Get the input right, and the AI does the heavy lifting.