Like many journalists, this GalleyCat editor always leaves the library with too many documents photocopied from books and magazines. With the right text recognition tools, we can avoid these problems all together–the best programs will transcribe scanned, photocopied, or photographed images into digital text.

Inspired by Lifehacker’s list of the Five Best Text Recognition Tools, we experimented with a trial copy of ABBYY FineReader Express Edition last night. Do you have a favorite text recognition program? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Here’s an excerpt: “Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been around for decades but only recently has become both economical and easy enough to use that it is within the reach of the average consumer. Today we’re looking at Lifehacker readers’ five favorite applications for turning physical text into machine-readable virtual text.”