OCR7 min read
Pulling line items from crumpled receipt photos (OCR that runs on your phone)
Lighting, angle, and crop tricks before you run image OCR on expense receipts.
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Expense season means a camera roll full of receipts on car seats, café counters, and wobbly tables. Cloud OCR apps work until you read their retention policy. Local OCR keeps the photo on your device.
Photo quality beats model magic
OCR engines are good, not psychic. A shadow across the total line will beat any algorithm. I flatten the receipt, shoot in daylight, fill the frame, and crop to the paper edges before running OCR.
- Avoid flash glare on thermal paper — it erases text
- Rotate so text is horizontal
- Higher resolution helps small VAT numbers
After extraction
Copy text into your spreadsheet and spot-check totals. OCR confuses 8 and 0 sometimes on faded prints. Thirty seconds of verification beats reconciling later.
image ocrreceiptsexpensestesseract