This Nifty Chrome Extension Lets You Copy and Delete Text Inside Images

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And now, the latest gem from the Google Chrome extension treasure chest: a tool that allows you to select, copy, and (soon) edit text inside images.

A plug-in named Project Naptha uses advanced “computer vision algorithms” to recognize text within images, freeing words from their JPEG and PNG shackles once and for all. You’ll never have to fret over transcribing a scanned document again.

To try it out, visit Project Naptha’s website and click the yellow Add to Chrome button.

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From there, the extension will ask you to grant it some permissions. Click Add.

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Now it’s installed. Try it out on one of your favorite memes, or a scanned page like the one below. When you select a sentence, it’s highlighted in blue. You can then right-click to see your options:

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From here you can search for a certain phrase or copy/paste the text into an email or a chat.

Unfortunately, the editing and translation options of Project Naptha are still in their beta phase. So you don’t have the option to add or translate text on every image online just yet. You can, however, delete words from images. To do that, select the text in question, right-click it, and choose Translate. From there, you’ll be able to erase text. Now you see it …

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… and now you don’t!

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We patiently await the ability to add in our own text, which will look something like this:

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You can test out the full features on the extension’s website, which is basically one big live demo. In the meantime, I invite you, dear reader, to offer suggestions of what to put in the empty blue box below Oprah.

Follow Alyssa Bereznak on Twitter or email her here.