Provides an interface to Tesseract OCR for high-accuracy text extraction from various image formats.

Install

mkdir -p .claude/skills/ocr && curl -L -o skill.zip "https://agentskills.codes/api/skills/download/1835" && unzip -o skill.zip -d .claude/skills/ocr && rm skill.zip

Installs to .claude/skills/ocr

Activation

This is the description your AI agent reads to decide when to run this skill — the better it matches your request, the more reliably it fires.

Extract text from images using Tesseract OCR
44 charsno explicit “when” trigger
Beginner

Key capabilities

  • Extract text from PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, and WEBP files
  • Support extraction for over 100 languages
  • Apply grayscale and thresholding image preprocessing
  • Generate output in plain text or JSON format
  • Include confidence scores in JSON output

How it works

The skill utilizes the Tesseract OCR engine to process images, optionally applying preprocessing steps like grayscale and thresholding to improve character recognition accuracy.

Inputs & outputs

You give it
Local image file path or remote image URL
You get back
Extracted text or JSON file with confidence scores

When to use ocr

  • Extract text from scanned documents
  • Digitize image-based data
  • Process images from URLs

About this skill

OCR Image Text Extraction Skill

Extract text from images using Tesseract OCR engine.

Capabilities

  • Extract text from image files (PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF)
  • Support for 100+ languages
  • Optional image preprocessing for better accuracy
  • Output in plain text or JSON format with confidence scores

Usage

Basic OCR

python3 scripts/ocr.py <image_file> <output_file>

With Options

# Specify language (default: eng)
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang eng

# Chinese text
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang chi_sim

# Multiple languages
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --lang eng+chi_sim

# With image preprocessing (improves accuracy)
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png text.txt --preprocess

# JSON output with confidence scores
python3 scripts/ocr.py image.png output.json --format json

Download and OCR from URL

# OCR from remote image
python3 scripts/ocr_url.py <image_url> <output_file>

# With options
python3 scripts/ocr_url.py https://example.com/image.jpg text.txt --lang eng --preprocess

Parameters

  • image_file / image_url (required): Path to local image or image URL
  • output_file (required): Path to output text/JSON file
  • --lang: Language code (e.g., eng, chi_sim, jpn, fra, deu). Default: eng
  • --preprocess: Apply image preprocessing (grayscale, thresholding) for better accuracy
  • --format: Output format (text/json, default: text)

Common Languages

LanguageCode
Englisheng
Chinese (Simplified)chi_sim
Chinese (Traditional)chi_tra
Japanesejpn
Koreankor
Frenchfra
Germandeu
Spanishspa
Russianrus
Arabicara

Supported Image Formats

PNG, JPG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, WEBP

Dependencies

  • Python 3.8+
  • pytesseract
  • Pillow (PIL)
  • tesseract-ocr (system package)

Installation

# Python packages
pip install pytesseract Pillow

# Tesseract OCR engine
sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr  # Ubuntu/Debian
sudo yum install tesseract           # CentOS/RHEL
brew install tesseract               # macOS

When not to use it

  • When processing non-image document formats
  • When high-accuracy extraction is required for low-quality, noisy images

Prerequisites

Python 3.8+pytesseractPillowtesseract-ocr system package

Limitations

  • Accuracy depends on image quality and preprocessing settings
  • Requires installation of system-level Tesseract engine

How it compares

This approach automates the digitization of image-based text through a command-line interface, whereas manual methods require manual transcription or GUI-based tools.

Compared to similar skills

ocr side by side with the closest alternatives in the catalog.

SkillInstallsUpdatedSafetyDifficulty
ocr (this skill)356moReviewBeginner
data-engineering137moReviewAdvanced
crawl4ai218moReviewIntermediate
data-cleaning-pipeline135moReviewIntermediate

Try saying

Example prompts that trigger this skill in your AI assistant.

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