--- title: OCR and languages | Developer Documentation description: How Parse reads scanned pages, phone photos, and image-only documents, with the OCR language list, camera-photo correction, and which Parse tier to pick for scans. --- Parse runs OCR automatically on any page that has no text layer: scanned PDFs, photographed receipts and forms, image files (`jpg`, `png`, `tiff`, `webp`, `heic`, and more), and images embedded inside born-digital documents. Text that already exists in a PDF is read directly. Most scans need no configuration at all. Three options matter when they do: the OCR language list, camera-photo correction for phone pictures, and the tier, because `fast` runs no AI model over the page. ## When to use it - A scanned contract, claim, lab report, or intake form where every page is an image. - Photos of documents taken with a phone, which arrive tilted, surrounded by background, and unevenly lit. - Documents in a language other than English, or with mixed-language content, where OCR should know which languages to expect. - Born-digital PDFs with embedded images whose text you want captured, or deliberately skipped. The [Parse overview](../../) lists scanned pages at odd angles and handwritten annotations among the layouts Parse is built to handle. Image quality still bounds what OCR can recover from a scan, and an image-only file whose pages yield no text fails with `NO_DATA_FOUND_IN_FILE` (see [Troubleshooting](../../../general/troubleshooting/)). ## Options | Option | Type | Default | What it does | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------- | ------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | `processing_options.ocr_parameters.languages` | array of language codes | unset | Languages OCR should expect. Order matters: put the primary language first. Only affects text read from images; native PDF text is unaffected. | | `input_options.image.camera_photo_correction` | boolean | unset | For `jpg`, `png`, `webp`, and `heic`/`heif` inputs, detects a photographed document, crops it, corrects perspective, and flattens uneven lighting and shadows before parsing. Clean scans and screenshots are left untouched, so it is safe on mixed batches. | | `processing_options.ignore.ignore_text_in_image` | boolean | unset | Skip OCR text from embedded images, for example logos or watermark graphics inside an otherwise digital document. It turns OCR off for the job, so use it only on born-digital files; a scanned page would come back without its text. | | `processing_control.job_failure_conditions.fail_on_image_ocr_error` | boolean | unset | Fail the whole job if OCR fails on any image. By default an OCR failure yields empty text for that image and the job continues. | | `output_options.spatial_text` | object | unset | Whitespace-preserving text output for scanned forms and receipts where position carries meaning. Flags: `preserve_layout_alignment_across_pages`, `preserve_very_small_text`, `do_not_unroll_columns`. Retrieve with `expand=["text"]`. | Language codes follow the `ParserLanguages` enum in the [API reference](https://developers.llamaindex.ai/reference/resources/parsing/methods/create): more than 80 values, including `en`, `fr`, `de`, `es`, `it`, `pt`, `nl`, `ru`, `ar`, `hi`, `ja`, `ko`, `ch_sim`, and `ch_tra`. ### Which tier to pick for scans | Input | Tier | | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Scanned pages, photos, multi-column scans | `agentic`, the default recommendation; `agentic_plus` for dense or mission-critical scans | | Plain scanned text where raw text or spatial text is enough | `fast`, the cheapest tier. It runs text extraction and OCR with no AI pass, so it does not accept `agentic_options` or `processing_options.forms` | | Mixed documents where only some pages are scans | `agentic` or `agentic_plus` with [Cost Optimizer](../../guides/configuring-parse/#cost-optimizer) | ## Example Parse a photographed French invoice, telling OCR to expect French first and English second: ``` from llama_cloud import LlamaCloud client = LlamaCloud() # reads LLAMA_CLOUD_API_KEY from the environment result = client.parsing.parse( file_id="FILE_ID", # uploaded with client.files.create(file=..., purpose="parse") tier="agentic", version="latest", input_options={"image": {"camera_photo_correction": True}}, processing_options={"ocr_parameters": {"languages": ["fr", "en"]}}, expand=["markdown", "text", "metadata"], ) print(result.markdown.pages[0].markdown) ``` `input_options.image` only applies to image files; it is ignored for a PDF. The `languages` list is used on every page that goes through OCR, whatever the file type. ## What you get OCR output looks the same as a born-digital parse: `markdown` per page with headings and tables, and `text` per page. The `text` view keeps the page’s spacing, which is why it suits receipts and forms. This excerpt is the first page of the [Quick Start](../../examples/parse_pdf_outputs/) report in the `text` view: ``` 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TO THE FY 2024 FINANCIAL REPORT OF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT NATION BY THE NUMBERS Net Cost: Gross Costs $ (7,772.2) $ (7,661.7) Less: Earned Revenue 652.9 $ 539.5 ``` Two per-page `metadata` fields are useful on scans. `original_orientation_angle` records, in degrees, the rotation Parse applied to read a crooked page (`0` when none was needed), and `confidence` (0 to 1) is the parser’s own estimate for the page, so you can route low-confidence scans to a human: ``` { "page_number": 1, "confidence": 0.985, "original_orientation_angle": 0, "watermark": "CONFIDENTIAL" } ``` Watermark text stamped across a page is reported in `watermark` on version `2026-09-28` and later of the `cost_effective`, `agentic`, and `agentic_plus` tiers; `output_options.watermark_handling` (`move_to_end`, `move_to_start`, or `remove`) controls where it goes in the markdown. ## See also - [Configuring Parse: OCR languages](../../guides/configuring-parse/#ocr-languages) and [camera photos](../../guides/configuring-parse/#images-camera-photos) - [Recipes: multi-language OCR](../../guides/recipes/#multi-language-ocr) in Python, TypeScript, Go, Java, and the CLI - [Tiers](../../guides/tiers/) for the full comparison, including what `fast` does and does not return - [Supported document types](../../../general/supported_document_types/) for the image and scan formats Parse accepts - [Forms and checkboxes](../forms-and-checkboxes/) for scanned forms that need field values, not just text