7 ms·

Project Naptha: Make Text in Browser Images Selectable

324 points by polm23 7y ago

dang 7y ago
A thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629396
- zeristor 7y ago
  Doesn't seem to support Firefox yet...
  - simlevesque 7y ago
    Works for me on FF 69 edit: I just saw that the page says my browser is not supported but I could use more than half of the examples
    - zeristor 7y ago
      I’m on FF70, I’ll give it a go
boksiora 7y ago
it works good, im using it from years :)
rammy1234 7y ago
why I get this ? ```“Where Did You Go?” <[ TEXT RECOGNITION IN PROGRESS / MORE INFO: http://projectnaptha.com/process/ http://projectnaptha.com/process/ (IDX:1:4&!&!&!&!:XDI) / ELAPSED 23.52SEC / DATE Mon, 09 Sep 2019 16:56:50 GMT / TEXT RECOGNITION IN PROGRESS ]> "Nothing. ```
- yorwba 7y ago
  The "more info" link explains that the text recognition is slow.
wood3n 7y ago
I use Firefox, but this is a must-have! Very impressed, I will be keeping up-to-date and I will be waiting for a Firefox version released! Good-luck!
- mintplant 7y ago
  I haven't tried it myself, but it might work with Chrome Store Foxified [0]. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...
johnisgood 7y ago
I have a privacy concern. Does this send the image (or the URL to that image) to their server for processing, or does it happen in my browser without their server receiving any information regarding the sites I visit, or the images I load?
- muizelaar 7y ago
  "By default, when you begin selecting text, it sends a secure HTTPS request containing the URL of the specific image and literally nothing else (no user tokens, no website information, no cookies or analytics) and the requests are not logged. The server responds with a list of existing translations and OCR languages that have been done. This allows you to recognize text from an image with much more accuracy than otherwise possible. However, this can be disabled simply by checking the "Disable Lookup" item under the Options menu."
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    Is the source code of their server available anywhere? Assuming I have it, it would be fairly easy to modify the extension to use my server instead of theirs, right?
    - antimatter15 7y ago
      (creator here) If you enable the "Disable Lookup" setting from the context menu the extension doesn't communicate with any servers at all— everything is processed with a Javascript/WebAssembly OCR engine bundled with the app— it just may be of a sightly lower quality.
      - Jommi 7y ago
        Hey! Is there some reason why its not working on some photos where the cursor is replaced with a magnifier tool?
      - johnisgood 7y ago
        This does not answer my question though. Is the source code for the server available? If it is more accurate, and is open sourced, then I would like to run my own and make the extension connect to my server.
GCA10 7y ago
I guess if Google can be inspired by the mathematical term "googol" and then choose a variant spelling, it's okay for Naptha to be inspired by the hydrocarbon product "naphtha" (note the second "H") and choose a variant spelling, too. But having grown up in the home of a chemistry professor, I'm having a hard time getting comfortable with this one.
- lxe 7y ago
  Ah just noticed this! The typo is not acknowledged in the "in the "What's in a Name?" paragraph in the end -- wonder if they noticed it?
  - andai 7y ago
    > naptha is a type of fuel often used for lighters from what I gather here, it is an accidental misspelling. Curiously, if you remove the other 'h' instead, as in 'naphta' (nafta), you end up with the word as actually used in many parts of the world.
  - antimatter15 7y ago
    (creator here) Unfortunately I only noticed the typo after purchasing the domain name and decided to run with it :)
    - ergothus 7y ago
      Time to build an elaborate (and false) reasoning to share, and at the end of the story reveal the truth.
    - civilian 7y ago
      I have an even better retroactive name justification! Naphtha is used as fuel, but it's also used as a solvent in chemical extraction and purification procedures. I honestly thought that was the reasoning when I saw the name & the tool. You purify text from images with naptha!
    - lxe 7y ago
umvi 7y ago
This will put that one reddit user that manually transcribes memes for blind people out of a job!
anewguy9000 7y ago
how about just making text in web pages selectable? looking at you facebook on android
foobaw 7y ago
This is a really cool idea for simple PDFs and images but I don't think the OCR capability is state of the art.
- antimatter15 7y ago
  (creator here) The copy is mostly referring to the text detection algorithm that was being used (It's built on a tweaked custom implementation of Microsoft Research's Stroke Width Transform algorithm)— which was state of the art a few years ago (when I first wrote the words on the website). Nowadays neural approaches perform a bit better, so I should probably change that.
haolez 7y ago
Something like this could be developed for the WASM backend of Qt. It works really well, but you lose all of those nice accessibility features of the normal web environment.
jm_l 7y ago
A fun little hack on Android phones (or at least Google Pixels -- this may be disabled by some OEMs). Starting last year the Android Recent Apps screen allows you to select text from the carousel of screenshots of apps. The way they do this is not by actually running the app, but by doing OCR on the screenshots, so you can actually select text that is otherwise not selectable like text in images by opening up recent apps.
- jchw 7y ago
  I use this a ton. Sometimes it will transcribe incorrectly, but overall it’s extremely useful, and I’ve found myself accidentally attempting to do it on iPhone too.
- kiliancs 7y ago
  I wish I had known this before! So useful!
- curiousgal 7y ago
  > little hack It's acually a feature, you can turn it off in the Pixel Launcher settings/Suggestions/Overview selection. On Android Pie, it can also be used to share/grab images that you couldn't normally download.
- marcusjt 7y ago
  I remember reading about this feature but alas it's disabled / not implemented on Samsung devices (or at least not on my S9)
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    Ah, Samsung, forever protecting us from the perils of accidentally being able to do things. (I do appreciate that they left in wi-fi calling, though; my wife's otherwise excellent Moto G4 has it disabled.)
EamonnMR 7y ago
Having this superpower is more useful then I realized it would be. Thanks for making it.
yborg 7y ago
https://ocr.space/copyfish https://ocr.space/copyfish This stuff is far superior for Chinese character recognition. Does amazingly well with text on background images as long as there is some contrast. Sometimes image cap doesn't work in Firefox, but Chrome derivatives are fine (I'm using with Vivaldi).
- zawerf 7y ago
  I remember uninstalling this due to malware reasons. I guess it has been resolved for a long time now? "Our Copyfish extension was stolen and adware-infested": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14888010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14888010
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmokgbialjjgfhfofbgfcghhbkejac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo... Google Cloud Vision OCR is incredible for Chinese character recognition. I think it's the same backend as Google Translate uses.
anewguy9000 7y ago
i don't see a privacy policy or licence?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Mengkudulangsat 7y ago
Doesn't work on Kanji :-( Reading untranslated manga would be so-much-easier if it does!
- peterburkimsher 7y ago
  Try https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmokgbialjjgfhfofbgfcghhbkejac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo... Contact me if you want to chat more about language learning and comics!
ank-26 7y ago
A similar tool for translating text on images. https://www.imagetranslate.com https://www.imagetranslate.com, which gives more control on editing the images and recreate them.
Zardoz84 7y ago
> currently only Google Chrome is supported Stop of doing this !
- JadeNB 7y ago
  Since it's something being given to you for free, perhaps "I would appreciate it if other browsers were supported" is more appropriate than this bare command.
- bootlooped 7y ago
  Seems like it is only 1 or 2 people building this. I don't think it's reasonable to expect hobby software projects to always support multiple browsers / OS / whatever. You have to start somewhere.
beagle3 7y ago
Only tangentially related, but probably a good thread to ask in: Is there an OCR that’s in the ballpark as Google’s image recognition API, and that runs locally? I need to read text from photographed images that I am legally not allowed to upload to google, and Tesseract is virtuallly useless for this.
sectorcleaar 7y ago
Useful

324 points by polm23 7y ago

dang 7y ago

A thread from 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7629396

zeristor 7y ago
Doesn't seem to support Firefox yet...
- simlevesque 7y ago
  Works for me on FF 69 edit: I just saw that the page says my browser is not supported but I could use more than half of the examples
  - zeristor 7y ago
    I’m on FF70, I’ll give it a go

boksiora 7y ago

it works good, im using it from years :)

rammy1234 7y ago

why I get this ? ```“Where Did You Go?” <[ TEXT RECOGNITION IN PROGRESS / MORE INFO: http://projectnaptha.com/process/ http://projectnaptha.com/process/ (IDX:1:4&!&!&!&!:XDI) / ELAPSED 23.52SEC / DATE Mon, 09 Sep 2019 16:56:50 GMT / TEXT RECOGNITION IN PROGRESS ]> "Nothing. ```

yorwba 7y ago
The "more info" link explains that the text recognition is slow.

wood3n 7y ago

I use Firefox, but this is a must-have! Very impressed, I will be keeping up-to-date and I will be waiting for a Firefox version released! Good-luck!

mintplant 7y ago
I haven't tried it myself, but it might work with Chrome Store Foxified [0]. [0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-foxified/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-store-...

johnisgood 7y ago

I have a privacy concern. Does this send the image (or the URL to that image) to their server for processing, or does it happen in my browser without their server receiving any information regarding the sites I visit, or the images I load?

muizelaar 7y ago
"By default, when you begin selecting text, it sends a secure HTTPS request containing the URL of the specific image and literally nothing else (no user tokens, no website information, no cookies or analytics) and the requests are not logged. The server responds with a list of existing translations and OCR languages that have been done. This allows you to recognize text from an image with much more accuracy than otherwise possible. However, this can be disabled simply by checking the "Disable Lookup" item under the Options menu."
- johnisgood 7y ago
  Is the source code of their server available anywhere? Assuming I have it, it would be fairly easy to modify the extension to use my server instead of theirs, right?
  - antimatter15 7y ago
    (creator here) If you enable the "Disable Lookup" setting from the context menu the extension doesn't communicate with any servers at all— everything is processed with a Javascript/WebAssembly OCR engine bundled with the app— it just may be of a sightly lower quality.
    - Jommi 7y ago
      Hey! Is there some reason why its not working on some photos where the cursor is replaced with a magnifier tool?
    - johnisgood 7y ago
      This does not answer my question though. Is the source code for the server available? If it is more accurate, and is open sourced, then I would like to run my own and make the extension connect to my server.

GCA10 7y ago

I guess if Google can be inspired by the mathematical term "googol" and then choose a variant spelling, it's okay for Naptha to be inspired by the hydrocarbon product "naphtha" (note the second "H") and choose a variant spelling, too. But having grown up in the home of a chemistry professor, I'm having a hard time getting comfortable with this one.

lxe 7y ago
Ah just noticed this! The typo is not acknowledged in the "in the "What's in a Name?" paragraph in the end -- wonder if they noticed it?
- andai 7y ago
  > naptha is a type of fuel often used for lighters from what I gather here, it is an accidental misspelling. Curiously, if you remove the other 'h' instead, as in 'naphta' (nafta), you end up with the word as actually used in many parts of the world.
- antimatter15 7y ago
  (creator here) Unfortunately I only noticed the typo after purchasing the domain name and decided to run with it :)
  - ergothus 7y ago
    Time to build an elaborate (and false) reasoning to share, and at the end of the story reveal the truth.
  - civilian 7y ago
    I have an even better retroactive name justification! Naphtha is used as fuel, but it's also used as a solvent in chemical extraction and purification procedures. I honestly thought that was the reasoning when I saw the name & the tool. You purify text from images with naptha!
  - lxe 7y ago

umvi 7y ago

This will put that one reddit user that manually transcribes memes for blind people out of a job!

anewguy9000 7y ago

how about just making text in web pages selectable? looking at you facebook on android

foobaw 7y ago

This is a really cool idea for simple PDFs and images but I don't think the OCR capability is state of the art.

antimatter15 7y ago
(creator here) The copy is mostly referring to the text detection algorithm that was being used (It's built on a tweaked custom implementation of Microsoft Research's Stroke Width Transform algorithm)— which was state of the art a few years ago (when I first wrote the words on the website). Nowadays neural approaches perform a bit better, so I should probably change that.

haolez 7y ago

Something like this could be developed for the WASM backend of Qt. It works really well, but you lose all of those nice accessibility features of the normal web environment.

jm_l 7y ago

A fun little hack on Android phones (or at least Google Pixels -- this may be disabled by some OEMs). Starting last year the Android Recent Apps screen allows you to select text from the carousel of screenshots of apps. The way they do this is not by actually running the app, but by doing OCR on the screenshots, so you can actually select text that is otherwise not selectable like text in images by opening up recent apps.

jchw 7y ago
I use this a ton. Sometimes it will transcribe incorrectly, but overall it’s extremely useful, and I’ve found myself accidentally attempting to do it on iPhone too.
kiliancs 7y ago
I wish I had known this before! So useful!
curiousgal 7y ago
> little hack It's acually a feature, you can turn it off in the Pixel Launcher settings/Suggestions/Overview selection. On Android Pie, it can also be used to share/grab images that you couldn't normally download.
marcusjt 7y ago
I remember reading about this feature but alas it's disabled / not implemented on Samsung devices (or at least not on my S9)
- JadeNB 7y ago
  Ah, Samsung, forever protecting us from the perils of accidentally being able to do things. (I do appreciate that they left in wi-fi calling, though; my wife's otherwise excellent Moto G4 has it disabled.)

EamonnMR 7y ago

Having this superpower is more useful then I realized it would be. Thanks for making it.

yborg 7y ago

https://ocr.space/copyfish https://ocr.space/copyfish This stuff is far superior for Chinese character recognition. Does amazingly well with text on background images as long as there is some contrast. Sometimes image cap doesn't work in Firefox, but Chrome derivatives are fine (I'm using with Vivaldi).

zawerf 7y ago
I remember uninstalling this due to malware reasons. I guess it has been resolved for a long time now? "Our Copyfish extension was stolen and adware-infested": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14888010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14888010
peterburkimsher 7y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmokgbialjjgfhfofbgfcghhbkejac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo... Google Cloud Vision OCR is incredible for Chinese character recognition. I think it's the same backend as Google Translate uses.

anewguy9000 7y ago

i don't see a privacy policy or licence?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Mengkudulangsat 7y ago

Doesn't work on Kanji :-( Reading untranslated manga would be so-much-easier if it does!

peterburkimsher 7y ago
Try https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmokgbialjjgfhfofbgfcghhbkejac https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cloud-vision/nblmo... Contact me if you want to chat more about language learning and comics!

ank-26 7y ago

A similar tool for translating text on images. https://www.imagetranslate.com https://www.imagetranslate.com, which gives more control on editing the images and recreate them.

Zardoz84 7y ago

> currently only Google Chrome is supported Stop of doing this !

JadeNB 7y ago
Since it's something being given to you for free, perhaps "I would appreciate it if other browsers were supported" is more appropriate than this bare command.
bootlooped 7y ago
Seems like it is only 1 or 2 people building this. I don't think it's reasonable to expect hobby software projects to always support multiple browsers / OS / whatever. You have to start somewhere.

beagle3 7y ago

Only tangentially related, but probably a good thread to ask in: Is there an OCR that’s in the ballpark as Google’s image recognition API, and that runs locally? I need to read text from photographed images that I am legally not allowed to upload to google, and Tesseract is virtuallly useless for this.

sectorcleaar 7y ago

Useful