OCR software need not be expensive and can be the quickest way to transfer huge amounts of text in an article or publication to editable text.

TopOCR is completely free and designed to be simple and user-friendly enough for use with a digital camera or smartphone. The aim is to make it easy to acquire documents and texts from business cards, newspapers, books and magazines without having to carry around a bulky notebook computer and scanner. OCR is surprisingly accurate and the developers claim it has up to a 99.8% accuracy rate with a 3 Megapixel camera. There are no page limits and no extra downloads or components needed. It can handle images with mixed text and graphics and it can even tolerate skew and uneven lighting. In terms of output formats, you have searchable PDF and HTML formats that are able to read 11 different languages. In addition, Smartphone owners will find it indispensable with full support for them including a useful (although not very accurate) Text-To-Speech software. This means that you can record thoughts, minutes and dictations and play them back later for TopOCR to print out.

This is a hugely comprehensive and generally accurate OCR package and best of all, it's entirely free.