Photo Translator: Turn Any Photo of Text into a Translation

A photo translator converts the text inside a photograph into another language and places the translation back into the image. Smartcat does this in three stages.

• Detect — text detection finds every region of the photo that contains writing.
• Extract and translate — AI-powered OCR pulls that text out, removes it from the background, and translates it into any of 280+ languages using your glossary and translation memory, so recurring names and terms translate the same way every time.
• Reinsert — the translated text goes back into the original image, set in one of Smartcat's supported fonts matched to the original as closely as that set allows.

Accepted via OCR: JPG/JPEG/JFIF, PNG, TIF/TIFF, BMP, GIF, DCX/PCX, JP2/JPC, DJVU/DJV, JB2, image-only PDF and AI, up to 30 MB per image.

Smartcat is free for 15 days with 15,000 Smartwords and no credit card — full access to translation capabilities.

Signs and storefronts, menus, forms and printed documents, packaging and labels, whiteboards and slides photographed in a meeting, screenshots, and printed handwriting. If the shot is blurry or badly lit, retake it rather than rescue it — thirty seconds of re-shooting beats ten minutes of correcting OCR output.

Via OCR: JPG/JPEG/JFIF, PNG, TIF/TIFF, BMP, GIF (first frame only), DCX/PCX, JP2/JPC, DJVU/DJV, JB2, image-only PDF and AI, up to 30 MB per image. HEIC and WebP are not on the supported list, so convert an iPhone HEIC shot to JPG first.

No — there is no app to install. It runs in the browser, including your phone's browser. If you found this page searching for a “photo translator app”: camera apps translate live through the lens; Smartcat translates the photos you've already taken and gives you files back.

For 15 days, yes — 15,000 Smartwords with full access to translation capabilities, no credit card, no app install. After that it's a paid plan.

Pricing is per image rather than per word for OCR jobs, so a camera roll of near-empty thumbnails costs the same per file as a dense page — see the stat above for the exact figure.

If you need one street sign translated while traveling, a free camera app is already on your phone — use it. Smartcat is for when the photos are work: many of them, needing consistent terminology, an editable result, or a reviewer.

For one sign right now, the camera app is faster — use it. Smartcat wins on everything that follows:

• A folder of photos in one job rather than one at a time.
• An output you can keep and edit — a translated photo plus extractable text, not an on-screen overlay.
• Terminology consistency across every photo, via glossary and translation memory.
• Human review inside the same workflow when it's high-stakes.
• A SOC 2 Type II compliant workspace rather than whatever the app's terms say.

Printed and clearly hand-printed text, yes. Cursive handwriting is genuinely hit-or-miss — recognition quality depends on the hand, the script, and the contrast.

Two documented details:

• Handwritten content is read only by this image-based OCR pipeline — the AI PDF workflow does not support handwriting at all.
• The image editor ships fonts covering CJK, Hebrew, Arabic and Devanagari, so non-Latin scripts can be re-rendered as well as recognized.

If a handwritten document is important, expect to correct the OCR pass in the editor before translating.

Smartcat is SOC 2 Type II compliant. Photos are encrypted in transit and at rest, and your workspace is isolated — relevant when the photo is a contract, an ID page, or anything you wouldn't paste into a free tool. Details on the security page.

Photo quality sets the ceiling. Blur, steep angles and low contrast lower OCR confidence, and a character misread at that stage cannot be repaired by the translation step.

Check the recognized source text in the editor before you rely on the output, and retake a bad shot rather than correct it.

Yes — screenshots are usually the easiest case, since the text is flat, sharp, and evenly lit. Upload the PNG or JPG like any photo.

There is a number for scans: at least 300 DPI, on a page that's straight and evenly lit with clear contrast. Camera photos aren't measured in DPI, so the practical bar there is that the text should be legible to a human at 100% zoom — even lighting, minimal angle, and the text filling a good part of the frame. Larger files simply take longer to process.

Yes. The original stays in your project untouched; the translation is generated as a separate file for each target language.

Yes — 280+ languages, including right-to-left scripts. For language-specific detail, see Japanese photo translation and Korean photo translation.

Up to 30 MB per image for OCR text extraction; project files overall are capped at 6 GB. There is no cap on how many photos one project holds — batches of hundreds of files are supported, the constraint is per-file size rather than file count, and none of it varies by plan.

This feature is not yet available for live events, but we are always innovating. If you have a specific need, please contact us and we can explore a solution.

Yes. You can manage terminology and style guides within Smartcat. Custom font support is also on our roadmap to ensure perfect brand alignment.

Yes. The image editor lets you adjust the translated text and its formatting directly in the platform, without separate design software, and it ships fonts covering CJK, Hebrew, Arabic and Devanagari for non-Latin targets. Book a demo to see it in action.