Scanned / ImageValidated with real files

Scanned/Photographed Data Table

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Any camera, scanner, or PDF export of a printed table — lab notebooks, old papers, instrument printouts

What it is

A photo, scan, or PDF of a printed table of numbers — not a native data format at all. AltaiPlot runs OCR (text recognition) plus grid-structure detection to turn the image back into rows and columns you can plot.

Who produces it

Anyone digitizing an old lab notebook, a printed instrument readout, or a table from a paper/PDF that has no underlying digital data file.

What we read / what we don't read

What we read

  • The table grid structure (rows/columns) detected from the image
  • Cell text via OCR, parsed into numbers where possible
  • The first page of a multi-page PDF

What we don't read

  • OCR accuracy on real photographed tables is NOT perfect — benchmarked in the mid-50%s cell-accuracy range on a held-out real-photo test set, not the ~99% you'd get from a native file. Use the interactive review step (not the headless/automatic import) so you can correct misread cells before they land in a sheet
  • Tables photographed at a steep skew angle (roughly beyond 8°) may misread a cell without any warning
  • A table that spans more than one PDF page is not merged — only the first page is read
  • Handwriting is not a target — this is built for printed/typed tables

How to import it into AltaiPlot

  1. Open AltaiPlot and drag your photo/scan/PDF onto the window, or use File → Import.
  2. AltaiPlot detects the image/PDF and opens the interactive scanned-table review panel — this is the recommended path, not the silent automatic one.
  3. Review the detected grid and OCR'd values, correcting any misread cells before committing.
  4. Click Import once the preview looks right.

Auditability note: this page's capability claims are sourced fromsrc/renderer/src/engine/v7/import/importers/ScannedTableImporter.ts:4 — see the full format list for every extension AltaiPlot recognizes.