--- title: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) type: templates category: Computer Vision cat: computer-vision order: 125 meta_title: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Data Labeling Template meta_description: Template for performing optical character recognition data labeling tasks with Label Studio for your machine learning and data science projects. ---

Perform optical character recognition (OCR) tasks using a variety of shapes on an image. Use this template to identify regions using shapes and transcribe the associated text for specific regions of the image. Open in Label Studio ## Labeling Configuration ```html

</View>
```

## About the labeling configuration

All labeling configurations must be wrapped in [View](/tags/view.html) tags.

Use the [Image](/tags/image.html) object tag to specify the image to label:
```xml
<Image name="image" value="$ocr"/>
```

Use the [Labels](/tags/labels.html) control tag to specify which labels are available to apply to the different shapes added to the image:
```xml
<Labels name="label" toName="image">
    <Label value="Text" background="green"/>
    <Label value="Handwriting" background="blue"/>
</Labels>
```
You can change the `value` of each `Label` to assign different labels to regions on the OCR task, such as "Letters" and "Numbers" or something else.

Use the [Rectangle](/tags/rectangle.html) control tag to add unlabeled rectangles:
```xml
<Rectangle name="bbox" toName="image" strokeWidth="3"/>
```
Using the Rectangle tag instead of the [RectangleLabels](/tags/rectanglelabels.html) tag means that you can have annotators perform OCR annotation in three steps: first by creating regions to highlight text, then associating labels with each region, then transcribing the text for each region. This also makes it easier to add pre-annotations for OCR tasks.

Use the [Polygon](/tags/polygon.html) control tag to add unlabeled polygons:
```xml
<Polygon name="poly" toName="image" strokeWidth="3"/>
```
The `strokeWidth` argument controls the width of the line outlining the polygon.

Use the [TextArea](/tags/textarea.html) control tag to add transcripts for each region drawn on the image, whether a rectangle or polygon. 
```xml
<TextArea name="transcription" toName="image"
            editable="true"
            perRegion="true"
            required="true"
            maxSubmissions="1"
            rows="5"
            placeholder="Recognized Text"
            displayMode="region-list"
            />
```
The `editable="true"` argument allows annotators to edit the text after submitting it, and `displayMode="region-list"` means that the text boxes appear in the region list associated with each rectangle or polygon, to make it easier to update the text. `perRegion="true"` means that each text box applies to a specific region, and `required="true"` means that annotators must add text to each text box before they can submit the annotation. The `placeholder` argument lets you specify placeholder text that is shown to annotators before they edit the text box.

## About the labeling process

1. Select a label (e.g. "Handwriting"), create a new bounding box and select it. 
2. Open the Outliner panel if it's not yet opened. Usually it's located on the left side.
3. Add text to each bounding box. Otherwise you will get a warning about missing text because the labeling configuration is using `required="true"`.

## Related tags
- [Image](/tags/image.html)
- [Labels](/tags/labels.html)
- [Rectangle](/tags/rectangle.html)
- [Polygon](/tags/polygon.html)
- [TextArea](/tags/textarea.html)