Microsoft Lens for Android

Google Lens is now integrated into the Google search engine in your smartphone and your web browser under Desktop (Windows, Mac or Linux). Directly from your web browser and in the Google search field, just click on the camera icon to trigger the visual recognition tool.

Google Lens

Google Lens is a visual recognition application offered by Google which offers immense possibilities in terms of information, research and translation from a simple photo.

Why use Google Lens ?

What are the news of the latest version of Google Lens ?

With which bones is google compatible ?

What are the best alternatives to Google Lens ?

Description

Developed by Google, Google Lens is a visual recognition application incorporating artificial intelligence. It works with the camera of a smartphone. This is the evolution of the old Google Goggles application.

By taking a photo of a text, a building, an object, a plant or an animal, for example, the application will share with you information relating to what is on the screen.

You can thus obtain information on the contents of a dish (or translate a menu) or on the opening hours of a historic site, know the breed of the cat which has sat by your side or find objects of Decoration in the same spirit as the one you have on your screen, if you wish. This research utility even provides you with a link to find the object in question.

Why use Google Lens ?

Google Lens simplifies all your daily research and invites you to be curious about everything in all simplicity. Taken on the spot or from your gallery, import an image in order to request its meaning, translation, to discover similar images, or to obtain additional information. It all depends on what your image is affecting.

In reality, Google Lens centralizes many already existing applications. You can for example take a photo of a poster or a panel in a foreign language to translate it and understand it. He replaces this Google Translate and other translation applications that offer this functionality.

You can also capture a business card and the free application will automatically detect text information and save it in your contacts. And if it is an event not to be missed, the application is able to add it to your agenda.

You want to find out about a plant in your garden or a tree encountered during a ride ? No need to have a dedicated application like Plant, Google Lens invites you to take a photo and search in the Google Images section directly. You have the most important database that is. And you are not limited to plants, you can do this with cats, bird breeds and all kinds of animals.

You are in front of a cultural establishment or a monument, a museum, a restaurant, a shop or other building welcoming the public and you want to know more about its opening hours, you just have to take a picture in order to obtain All desired information. And if you wish, you can get opinions and recommendations via Google Maps. Indeed, Google Lens is connected to the other Google applications of your smartphone.

You have noticed a table, a garment, a piece of furniture or any object that you like with a friend, but he no longer knows where he bought it. Take a picture of it and consult the whole shopping list to find it or if not, you will be able to find similar products that could please you.

And for books, simply take the title in pictures to obtain a summary, a description and notices of readers, as well as links to buy it in physical or digital version.

And as if that were not enough, Google Lens is able to scan QR Codes and barcodes. No need to download and install a third -party application like QR Code Reader.

Discover the operation of Google Lens in our tutorial How to read a QR code with your smartphone ?

What are the news of the latest version of Google Lens ?

Google Lens is now integrated into the Google search engine in your smartphone and your web browser under Desktop (Windows, Mac or Linux). Directly from your web browser and in the Google search field, just click on the camera icon to trigger the visual recognition tool.

Google Lens is also available from Google Photos for all photos saved on your Google Photos account. Display one of your images and just click the Lens button at the bottom of your screen, with the other commands.

Finally, you can find it in the Google assistant on most Android phones.

With which bones is google compatible ?

You can download and install Google Lens only on Android smartphones from version 6.0.

If you want to have it on your iPhone, you need to download and install the application Google Photos.

Google Lens being accessible from the Google search engine, via a web browser, so it is possible to use this service from your computer under Windows, Mac or Linux.

What are the best alternatives to Google Lens ?

If you are an iPhone user and you don’t have google photos to install on your smartphone, you can download and install the extension Search by Image For your Safari browser. Similar in image research features, it supports several search engines such as Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Tineye, Image Banks, etc.

Camfind is more specialized in commercial objects and products, but it allows you to take a landscape or a photo text to obtain the translation or additional information. The application is free and compatible Android and iOS, but it remains, however, less ergonomic and only available in English.

Of course, Google Lens offers an important database, but some dedicated applications provide much more than information. Plant thus offers the community the possibility of participating in the identification of plants and sharing many scientific data to the whole community. Other applications allow users to share their knowledge, or manage their garden by creating reminders for watering and maintenance of plants, etc.

The Microsoft Bing search engine also incorporates a visual recognition system to download from Android or iOS smartphones, or to be used from your web browser. From an imported image, taken live or from an URL, this visual search system makes it possible to identify the main elements that make it up and list all the web pages with the same image or associated content.

Microsoft Lens for Android

Microsoft Lens (formerly “Office Lens”) is an excellent way to capture information from documents, white tables, business cards, receipts, menus, signs, handwritten memos or any other element containing text that you want to import, but that you do not type manually yourself. With Microsoft Lens, you do not need to note notes by hand, to rely on blurred mobile phone images or to worry about moving anything.

Microsoft Lens is also ideal for capturing sketches, drawings and equations, even images without text. During the capture of images, Microsoft Lens eliminates shadows and odd corners, so that your final captures are easier to see.

You can load your images of document and whiteboard captured in Microsoft OneNote, Word, PowerPoint or OneDrive, and you can also save them in PDF format or send them by e-mail.

Noticed : Microsoft Lens does not support these features for GCC accounts: business card, text image, picture in table, Word image, image to PPT and loading on OneNote.

If you have not already done so, download the latest version of Microsoft Lens from the latest version from Google Playstore.

Step 1: Choose the elements to be captured

As soon as you open Microsoft Lens, you can choose a capture mode.

Sweep to the left or right near the bottom of the screen to select Whiteboard, Document, Actions, Visit card Or Photo.

Whiteboard This mode is better used to capture handwritten notes and sketches on a dry erasure card or a similar surface. Microsoft Lens will adjust your images so that the background is not too bright and that the ink lines are easier to see.

Document This mode is optimized for small words written or tapped on a page or on a note. It is also ideal for forms, receipts, posters, swings or restaurant menus.

Actions This mode is a collection of the following submodes available:

• The text can be used to extract text from your image, which you can copy or share.
• Table can be used to extract a printed table from your image that you can copy and share
• Reading Can be used to read any text in your image out loud in the immersive reader.
• The contact can be used to extract information from a professional card and save it as contact on your device.
• The QR code Can be used to analyze a QR code in order to display, copy and share the information displayed by the code.

Visit card This mode captures the contact information of a corporate card and saves it in the contacts application of your Android device, as well as in Microsoft OneNote. This feature is currently working better with business cards in English, German, Spanish or simplified Chinese.

Photo This mode is better used to capture photos and images containing landscapes or people.

Step 2: Take a photo

Once you have selected your capture mode in step 1, you can take a new photo with your camera or import an existing image from your device.

Perform one of the following operations:

To take a photo with your Android device, point the camera on the item you want to capture and make sure the orange frame of the camera has the item you want to capture. The flash of your camera is configured to turn off automatically (if necessary), but you can modify this setting by pressing the icon Flash In the upper right corner of the capture window. When you are ready to take the photo, press the button Camera Round to the bottom of your screen.

Advice : People who are blind or visually impaired can use the screen player Talkback In Android to get real -time vocal advice, such as “move to the right”, “go up”, etc. For more information, see basic tasks using a screen player with Microsoft Lens.

Noticed : When installed on Android devices with more than 3 GB of RAM, the latest semiicrosoft lens version allows you to capture and import up to 100 images in a single analysis for locally stored images and PDF files. You can choose to revise each image after having taken it, or revise them and modify them later.

Step 3: Check and modify

Microsoft Lens allows you to modify the images captured before saving them, so that they present themselves exactly as you wish. You have the possibility of adjusting the edges of each image after its capture, or you can capture images one after the other and modify them later.

Press one of the icons that appear in the lower status bar to start modify or adjust a captured image.

You can add a new image to your analysis, apply a filtered To the picture, crop, to rotate Or DELETE the image, annotate it with the stylus or with the text, or reorganize images.

Using the functionality scoring Optional, you can delete all unwanted parts of the image by excluding them from your selection.

To reorganize several images in an analysis, press Reorganize. You will see all the images captured in a single view and you can then slide them in the desired order.

When you have finished reorganizing the images, press Finished In the lower right corner. You can then continue to modify the current image with one of the other editing tools.

When you have finished modifying your images, press the orange button Finished in the lower status bar.

Step 4: Save and share

If your image has been captured in mode Whiteboard, Document Or Photo , You can save it in the gallery on your Android device.

You can also save image in PDF format (Portable Document Format) or save it in Microsoft OneNote, OneDrive, Word or PowerPoint.

Check the desired option (or options), then press Save.

Noticed : If you choose to record the image in OneNote, OneDrive, Word or PowerPoint, you may be invited to connect with your Microsoft account or your professional or school account.

If you want optical character recognition (OCR) to be applied to your captured image, select the option Word. Microsoft Lens Create a word file in your OneDrive account, which automatically extracts all the readable text found in your captured image.

If your image has been captured in mode Map of visit, select OneNote To save it as a VCARD (file .VCF). If you also want to save the image in the gallery on your Android device, select Gallery, then press Save.

Edit a PDF file previously analyzed

You can easily modify a PDF file created previously with Microsoft Lens. On your Android device, go to My files By pressing the menu three points at the top right of your screen. Then press the three -point menu with regard to the name of the PDF file that you want to modify, then press To modify.

You can now add additional images to this PDF file, modify existing images or reorganize one of the images.

Use smart actions

Select the mode Actions In the hand screen. This brings you to the first submodude, which you can use to extract text from an image.

To extract text from an image, select the mode Text , Select the default text language from the menu at the top of the screen, point the camera to the text you want to extract, then press the button Camera round.

Then position the text by adjusting the edges of the image, then press Continue in the lower right corner of the screen. If you want to resume the image, press To resume in the lower right corner of the screen.

When you press Continue, Microsoft Lens extracts image text and displays it on your screen. You can now to copy the text and to share it in any other application on your Android device.

Noticed : Microsoft Lens currently supports 30 languages ​​to extract text from an image. However, text extraction from handwritten notes is currently limited to English only.

Extract an image table

To extract the picture of an image, select the mode Table , Point the camera on the table you want to capture, then press the button Camera round.

Then position the table by adjusting the image edges, then press Continue in the lower right corner of the screen. If you want to resume the image, press To resume in the lower right corner of the screen.

When you press Continue, Microsoft Lens extracts the image table and displays it on the screen. You can now to copy the table and share it in one of the other applications on your Android device.

Noticed : Microsoft Lens currently supports 21 languages ​​to extract a printed table from an image.

Read text in immersive readers

To read text from an image, select the mode Reading , Point the camera on the text you want to read, then press the button Camera round.

Then position the text by adjusting the image edges and press Continue in the lower right corner of the screen. If you want to resume the image, press To resume in the lower right corner of the screen.

When you press Continue, Microsoft Lens displays the text in the image in the immersive reader. You can press the button Reading To listen to the text pronounced aloud. You can change the text size, spacing, font and other parameters by pressing the 3 -line menu icon at the top right.

Noticed : Microsoft Lens currently supports 30 languages ​​to read readable text aloud in an image.

Save business card contact information on your phone

To analyze a professional card and save it as contact on your phone, select the mode Contact, Point the camera on the professional card, then press the button Camera round.

Then position the business card by adjusting the image edges, then press Continue in the lower right corner of the screen. If you want to resume the image, press To resume in the lower right corner of the screen.

When you press Continue, Microsoft Lens displays the contact information extracted from the professional card and you can save it in your contacts on your device.

Scan a QR code

Select the mode QR code , Then point the camera on the code you want to analyze. Microsoft Lens automatically analyzes the code and displays the information link, which you can to copy And share in any other application on your Android device.

Additional Information

The captured images saved as Word, PowerPoint or PDF files can be found in your folder Documents On OneDrive, which allows you to access it from one of your devices. PDF files can also be saved locally on your Android device, and you can change the recording location for your PDF file by pressing the button Save .

Microsoft Lens just just doesn’t matter an image in a word or powerpoint file. The final Word and PowerPoint documents are Microsoft Office Real Documents.

Microsoft Word can recognize handwritten or printed and printed text, as well as the general layout of what you capture. Consequently, the text, formatting and layout in the word document that Microsoft Lens creates are fully modifiable, as if you had created the document yourself.

Microsoft PowerPoint can recognize the traits and handwritten features that are transformed into drawing objects that can be recolored, resized, displaced and modified. You can also delete the background from the drawings, which facilitates their reuse in other presentations.

PDF (Portable Document Format) files extract text information from a captured image. You can find the content of the text of a PDF file and highlight or copy any part of the page with your favorite PDF reader application.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is supported in the following languages:

Save the destination

Target text/

Word, PDF, OneDrive, OneNote, immersive reader

German, English, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Korean, Danish, Spanish, Finnish, French, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish, Czech and Turkish

Business card mode (OneNote)

Visit card

German, English, simplified Chinese, Spanish

Accessibility

To facilitate the use of Microsoft Lens, you can connect a keyboard to your device with Bluetooth or USB.

In addition, accessibility settings in Android that can help you use Microsoft Lens in a way that suits you best. On your Android device, go to Settings > Accessibility To activate features such as Talkback.

Support

If you need help with Microsoft Lens for Android, you can send an email to our product team to [email protected].