Bing OCR Requirements
This article is obsolete. It describes the requirements to install The Bing Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Control and embed it in an application.
Published date: March 4, 2014
Warning
The Bing OCR Control is deprecated as of March 12, 2014.
Requirements for Bing OCR
The Bing OCR Control uses the camera on the user’s device to take a picture and then sends that picture to the Bing OCR Service for analysis. The service analyzes the picture for recognizable text in the currently selected language, and then sends the recognized text back to the client device.
You cannot access the OCR Service except by using the Bing OCR Control.
Hardware Requirements
The end users system must be a Windows 8.x certified device with a built in rear facing camera that supports 1280x720 or 640x480 resolution in photo mode.
Image Requirements
The accuracy of text recognition depends in part on the quality of the image. An inaccurate reading may be caused by the following:
Blurry images
Handwritten or cursive text
Artistic font styles
Very small or far away text
For best results the text should be mostly horizontal, although the OCR service can correct for rotation to a limited extent. All text in the image must be oriented in the same direction in order to be recognized correctly.
Software Requirements
The Bing OCR Control runs on Windows 8.1. To add the control to an application, you must have Visual Studio 2013 installed. You can then download the control and register it with your solution. For more information, see How to: Install and Register the Bing OCR Control with the Azure Data Marketplace
Licensing Requirements
The Bing OCR Control depends on the Bing OCR Service to perform character analysis, and the service is only available through the control. To gain access to the service for your application, you must subscribe to the control and then register your application with the Windows Azure Data Marketplace For more information, see How to: Install and Register the Bing OCR Control with the Azure Data Marketplace.
Your registration covers all users of your application.