OCR is not working

[punk1234567]

Hi,

I am using the command markitdown id.pdf > document.md to convert a PDF containing both text and images. The text present inside images does not appear to be OCR-processed in the output.

Am I missing any configuration or optional dependency required for OCR? Or is OCR functionality currently not supported as part of the MarkItDown project?

Please advise.

Thanks,
Sam

[Jah-yee]

Hi @sam, the OCR functionality for PDFs with embedded images requires a separate plugin. The core markitdown package does not include OCR by default.

To enable OCR:

1. Install the OCR plugin:

pip install markitdown-ocr
pip install openai  # or any OpenAI-compatible client

2. Use with Python API:

from markitdown import MarkItDown
from openai import OpenAI

md = MarkItDown(
    enable_plugins=True,
    llm_client=OpenAI(),
    llm_model="gpt-4o",
)
result = md.convert("document_with_images.pdf")

Or via CLI:

pip install markitdown-ocr
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-api-key"
markitdown --use-plugins document_with_images.pdf -o document.md

I submitted a PR (#1608) to clarify this in the README. Let me know if you have any questions!

[punk1234567]

Thank you for the response. Truly appreciate it.