(Music)
- [Don] Hi, this is Don McAllister,
and welcome to another ScreenCastsOnline weekly tip video.
I find I use copy and paste an awful lot in Mac OS,
and while it's great to be able to select text
from the majority of apps,
there are instances where it's not selectable.
This week's tip is all about in inexpensive utility
from the Mac App Store that turns pretty much everything
on your Mac in selectable text, even images.
The utility is called Picatext.
So this is Picatext across over on the Mac App Store,
I'm actually gonna use the Mac App Store as an example
as to what I mean by not being able to select text.
So let's say I wanted to actually use
this opening paragraph describing Picatext
in a review I was doing.
But if I try and select the screen,
this is un-selectable text.
So all I need to do with Picatext installed,
I just bring up the Picatext window
and then I can just click on this button here.
Gives me a cursor control.
If I actually just drag across the area of the screen
that I want to capture, let go.
And there we go, there is the text,
the editable, selectable text in Picatext itself.
So I can copy this to the clipboard,
I can send it across to a word processing document,
and edit that text.
Now, even better is that you can set up a keyboard shortcut
so that you can get directly to the Picatext application.
To do that, if we go down to this cogwheel,
and then for the keyboard shortcut
they recommend control option command P.
So I'll go with that.
I can also put the recognised text
directly into the clipboard once it's selected,
and I can launch Picatext on login.
So let's go ahead and do that.
So if I go over here now,
and let's say we want to grab these bullet points.
So control, option, command, P.
I get my little cursor control.
Just pick the area of the screen that I want to capture,
let go,
and there we go.
Across in the Picatext window
I have the detail of the text that's been captured.
If I just go to the bottom, and do a command V,
that text is also in my clipboard as well
so I can copy it straight into another application.
Now it supports over 40 languages,
so currently we're on English
but all these different languages, it recognises
and will OCR, because that's basically what it's doing,
it's doing OCR in the background.
Optical Character Recognition.
And as I say, it supports up to 40 languages.
Now because I'm actually just painting an area of the screen
this will work for images as well.
So if you have text in an image,
you can capture the text from an image.
Or if you want, if you have something a bit more complicated
you can actually upload the file to the Picatext server,
it will OCR it for you and then deliver it back down to you.
So, let me show you how that works.
If I actually just, well let's use this same window.
I'll just delete this text.
In fact let me go across to the Finder,
yeah, I've got this codesnippet.png file,
so this just a screenshot of some code
that I was looking at earlier.
Let's see, so this is some HTML code and some PHP code.
But let's say I wanted to actually convert this
and use this code in another application,
or edit the code.
So what I would do, is I would over here
on the Picatext window, click the upload button.
And now I need to navigate to here,
so I'll just drag this file across to this window here.
We'll say open.
Give it a few seconds and there we go.
That image file, don't forget that's a .png file,
an image file has been OCRd,
and is now available to me.
Obviously with it being code
I'd need to go through and just double check.
But you can see here that
that looks pretty comprehensive as far as I can see.
So, go ahead, try Picatext out.
It's £3.99 in the UK.
Well worth it, it's a great little utility to have
in your tool bag.