Handwriting detection with Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
The Vision API can detect and extract text from images:
DOCUMENT_TEXT_DETECTIONextracts text from an image (or file); the response is optimized for dense text and documents. The JSON includes page, block, paragraph, word, and break information.
One specific use of DOCUMENT_TEXT_DETECTION is to detect handwriting in an image.

Try it for yourself
If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how Cloud Vision API performs in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.
Try Cloud Vision API freeDocument text detection requests
Set up your Google Cloud project and authentication
Detect document text in a local image
You can use the Vision API to perform feature detection on a local image file.
For REST requests, send the contents of the image file as a base64 encoded string in the body of your request.
For gcloud and client library requests, specify the path to a local image in your
request.
REST
Before using any of the request data, make the following replacements:
- BASE64_ENCODED_IMAGE: The base64
representation (ASCII string) of your binary image data. This string should look similar to the
following string:
/9j/4QAYRXhpZgAA...9tAVx/zDQDlGxn//2Q==
- PROJECT_ID: Your Google Cloud project ID.
HTTP method and URL:
POST https://vision.googleapis.com/v1/images:annotate
Request JSON body:
{
"requests": [
{
"image": {
"content": "BASE64_ENCODED_IMAGE"
},
"features": [
{
"type": "DOCUMENT_TEXT_DETECTION"
}
]
}
]
}
To send your request, choose one of these options:
curl
Save the request body in a file named request.json,
and execute the following command:
curl -X POST \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
-H "x-goog-user-project: PROJECT_ID" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8" \
-d @request.json \
"https://vision.googleapis.com/v1/images:annotate"
PowerShell
Save the request body in a file named request.json,
and execute the following command:
$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred"; "x-goog-user-project" = "PROJECT_ID" }
Invoke-WebRequest `
-Method POST `
-Headers $headers `
-ContentType: "application/json; charset=utf-8" `
-InFile request.json `
-Uri "https://vision.googleapis.com/v1/images:annotate" | Select-Object -Expand Content
If the request is successful, the server returns a 200 OK HTTP status code and
the response in JSON format.
Go
Before trying this sample, follow the Go setup instructions in the Vision quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Vision Go API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Vision, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.
Java
Before trying this sample, follow the Java setup instructions in the Vision API Quickstart Using Client Libraries. For more information, see the Vision API Java reference documentation.
Node.js
Before trying this sample, follow the Node.js setup instructions in the Vision quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Vision Node.js API reference documentation.
To authenticate to Vision, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.