OCR is a system that provides full alphanumeric recognition of printed or handwritten characters by simply scanning the image. OCR software converts visuals of handwritten, typed, or printed text into machine-encoded text. Think of it as the process of turning analogue data into digital.
OCR deals with the problem of recognizing all kinds of different characters and provides a complete documents processing solution. It includes image categorization, image pre-processing, scanning and recognition capabilities.