OCR, GPT and Shortcuts
Testing and Looking for the Best OCR Apps, Chat GPT Shortcuts Integration, Tips for GPT Prompts, Sheron Rupp Photography and a Film With Javier Bardem
Hey everyone! It’s been a busy week for me as I switch between projects. I just finished a big photography editing job and now I’m planning my next Skillshare class. I’m still deciding on the topic, but I’ll keep you posted as I work on the planning/outline and—later—production.
Ok, for now let me share with you some things that stood out from this past week.
On OCR and PDF Tools
For several weeks already, I’ve been doing lots of writing on my typewriter. I usually scan everything I type as PDFs and, if necessary, I extract/convert to text on my desktop. Up until now, I had been using Cleanshot’s OCR functionality, which was decent enough. Cleanshot is an amazing utility for screenshots and screen recording, but OCR is just a little extra in there. I still find it much better than the native OCR functionality by Apple, but if I were to be doing this more extensively (on Desktop), I’d probably go for OwlOCR, since this seems to be the one of the most popular OCR apps all over the internet, Reddit, and forums.
Now… the thing that I ran into this week is that I wanted to do all of the OCR processing on my phone. My favorite PDF creation app, Genius Scan, does offer text recognition as part of a subscription, but there’s no way to have a free trial and, to be honest, I think it’s an outstanding PDF scanning app in its free version but I only wanted the OCR part of the subscription. So I went ahead and did a huge search and tried most of the other popular apps on the App Store that allow OCR. Here’s what I found:
The vast majority of apps seem to be using Apple’s OCR engine. Want to know how well Apple’s OCR works on your PDF? I made this shortcut specifically for you. Share to it a PDF file with non-editable text (or images with text), and the result will be copied to your clipboard. You’ll notice that the line breaks can be messy, and the text recognition results may vary depending on the typeface used and how clear the image is. I discovered that running the output through Chat GPT and asking it to fix spelling and line breaks does an okay job, but I wanted to avoid the extra step. That’s when I found QuickScan, which offers an AI OCR feature and provides pretty good results. It does a much better job recognizing the typeface of my typewriter, and in my testing its OCR is even better than Adobe Scan, Scanner Pro, or CamScanner (some of the most popular options) although the line breaks still require manual input. Uploading PDFs to Google Drive and selecting text from there gave me similar results—and with the same caveat.
After a LOT of trial and error I discovered Prizmo Go and this is by far the best OCR app for iOS I’ve found. It does a great job at recognizing most of the line breaks (especially if you have indented paragraphs), and it seems to even be pretty good with handwritten text. Biggest downside for me is that it’s a subscription, but at $10 USD a year it may very well be worth it.
On Chat GPT
It has never been part of my plan to make this newsletter about AI or Chat GPT, but I am excited to see this tool continue to evolve and I continue to experiment with it for creative purposes.
This week brought a new update to the official Chat GPT iOS app, and it looks amazing! Now, Chat GPT is integrated with Shortcuts, which is fantastic for those who don’t pay for an API token. Although I haven’t had enough time to thoroughly test it, I’m curious to see how much faster it is and what limitations it has compared to something like S-GPT Shortcut, which I often use. With Chat GPT integrated into Shortcuts, everyone has access to a wealth of creative possibilities.
Few days ago I read this articlewith some very good and practical tips for coming up with better Chat GPT prompts.
On Photography
This week I discovered the work of Sheron Rupp and I immediately loved it. Something that is VERY interesting to me is Sheron’s evolution as a photographer into the new ‘digital’ medium. Check out her IG.
I read this article (in Spanish) about photographer Andrés Ríos documenting his family during covid times. I had previously shared about his work, but seeing this article pop up in my reading list was still refreshing.
On Cinema
Shivers (1975). Cronenberg is one of those directors that I’ve always felt a bit ahead of his time. Synopsis: The residents of a suburban high-rise apartment building are being infected by a strain of parasites that turn them into mindless, sex-crazed fiends out to infect others.
The Good Boss (2021). I watched this one because of Javier Bardem but the story itself and the development of the narrative was not bad at all. It a drama disguised as comedy, I guess. Synopsis: Julio Blanco is the proprietor of Básculas Blanco, a Spanish company producing industrial scales in a provincial Spanish town, which awaits the imminent visit from a committee that will decide if they merit a local Business Excellence award: everything has to be perfect when the time comes. Working against the clock, Blanco pulls out all the stops to address and resolve issues with his employees, crossing every imaginable line in the process.
I Like Movies (2023). If you like movies (like I do) you may like this one. Synopsis: Socially inept 17-year-old cinephile Lawrence Kweller gets a job at a video store, where he forms a complicated friendship with his older female manager.
If you liked this you may also enjoy some content I have up on my YT Channel! I don’t hang around social media a lot, but when I do I’m on IG or Twitter. You can also check out some of my online classes, listen to my music, or in case you haven’t already, subscribe to my weekly newsletter. Thank you for reading!