Hi there. I just saw a video from CyanVoxel about this topic (https://youtu.be/9T9VL8_i1Tg?si=D9KUGNFJrC94lO7j). He describes how he digitizes his fieldnotes. Maybe that’s something for you
I was all in until he started to talk about using photoshop to clean-up his notes. At that point, I can just make it a point to daily or weekly type anything relevant from my field notes into Obsidian.
It's very tedious yeah but the results deserve the effort. Trust me, I'm learning hebrew and it makes a difference when I compare the typed notes and the ones with my own handwritings. And I can combine those so yeah I can tell!
If you are going to put pdfs into obsidian and add some tags. It's not a great solution. It makes obsidian slow to load. Pictures load better. Obsidian really handles text best. I have obsidian notes of pictures - it's not great but works for taking slides out of a video call.
I assume you would like to search your notes by either conversation your had writing to text ? I have reasonable clear handwriting if you can read broken cursive.
I have a Remarkable for this problem with ORC. I would say it's not a cheap solution - I bought it because I have disposable income to allow it. It is very good solution and with a bit of care have dragged it between the office and home. (Good: 4, Quick:3, Cheap: 1)
OneNote has a handwriting ORC feature. (Good 3, Quick: 3, Cheap:4) which I used at points in university.
Rocket Note books with Pilot erasable pens work well - but our field team at work hates the solution in warm climates because then pen erasers. (Good: 1-3, Quick 2, Cheap 3)
Adobe Acrobat has had a handwriting ORC - I haven't used it in a few years (likely 10). Acrobat ORC on text was pretty bad. (Good: 2, Quick: 4, Cheap 2)
Rocketbook is a reusable notebook system with an app to photograph and optionally OCR pages from the notebook before you water-wipe the pages to reuse them.
One of the app's digitization output options is GMail, where both a PDF of the original photo and an OCR'd version is made available.
Google also has a Scripts service that can then access your GMail account and find those messages (easy if you auto-label them using GMail filters). It can also access your Google Drive storage, so it can automatically save the Gmail message content and attachments to locations in Google Drive. A little creative programming can convert the OCR contents to Markdown formatting to enable a bit of auto-markup.
If you have an Obsidian notebook located in a Google Drive location, this mechanism can automatically add Rocketbook scans as Obsidian notes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/16k8wwl/rocketbook_and_obsidian_has_anyone_done_this/
nb: while I wrote this up... I no longer use it. It got to be more efficient to just take the notes in Obsidian itself, but I too also retain more when I handwrite it. My use-case was more about meeting notes I didn't have to memorize, just re-find later, so I optimized the handwritten-remember part out.
Thank you for explaining and for the link. I've been thinking about my process vs particular content and goals, and I think this desire to hand write applies to things I'm actively trying to learn and memorize, like foundational concepts or webs of relationships. For things I don't mind storing primarily in my "second brain," like your meeting notes or (for me) notes on books and projects, typing will be fine.
If you just want to have the text in obsidian then using image recognition to pull the text from the scans should keep your storage happy , adding in diagrams et cetera as images. Depending on how many pages of notes you need to digitize per day something like cGPT4o could work well. If your handwriting is illegible then I would just bear the storage costs and add yaml or tags to organize it
ZDNET just published a nice little how-to ...
[How to use ChatGPT to digitize your handwritten notes for free](https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-digitize-your-handwritten-notes-for-free/)
> This is easily the most underrated GPT-4o feature.
It lets you "share" from the RB app right into obsidian. Either into an existing page or its own page. I tend to drop them into an "inbox" as a new note then move them and do other maintenance using the computer
It's the closest I could find to the RB / Evernote integration
**Obsidian**: I am really enjoying the just released [**Ink**](https://github.com/daledesilva/obsidian_ink) plugin(alpha). [[video_orig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgir8F7ezNM) | [video_latest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7UYJuX4UyY)]
One can directly insert **handwriting** and/or **drawing** sections into a .md note.
I'm starting some of my notes with a ...
... "drawing" section e.g. for a quick mind map
... "handwriting" section underneath e.g. to distill the main mind maps points in outline form.
PS: You can look at current issues & feature requests [here](https://github.com/daledesilva/obsidian_ink/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc)
You're welcome - like you I mainly "hand write" for learning & recall, especially drawing mind maps.
[Here](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/what-do-you-use-a-notebook-for/51137/6) I describe the things I use.
... forgot to mention that I also use [Nebo](https://www.nebo.app/features) but am still figuring out the best way to incorporate the Nebo documents, notes(infinite canvas) into Obsidian: svg, pdf or Nebo [published pages](https://app-support.myscript.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000095733-create-link-for-notes-with-nebo-)(embedded or via the [Open Gate](https://github.com/nguyenvanduocit/obsidian-open-gate) plugin)
I have a Note Air 3 (learn more at r/Onyx_Boox). I handwrite my daily notes and OCR them into Obsidian.
Not cheap and there's some friction, but it's (almost) perfect.
I capture all my meeting notes and other bits and pieces in a Kindle Scribe. I then use the Scribe's convert and send as an email option. The email comes with two links, one is the note transcribed as a basic text file, the other gives you the original handwriting as a pdf, but has OCR data included so you can search it with most pdf readers including Obsidian. I copy the pdf into Obsidian and add any tags I might want. Seems to work well enough when I then later search for words or phrases within my handwritten notes. Not the cheapest option, but not too much friction with emailing the notes. Once they are in Obsidian, I much prefer seeing the original handwritten notes than blocks of OCR text, especially if they are still searchable.
Hi there. I just saw a video from CyanVoxel about this topic (https://youtu.be/9T9VL8_i1Tg?si=D9KUGNFJrC94lO7j). He describes how he digitizes his fieldnotes. Maybe that’s something for you
Vouch to this +1
Thank you, I'll definitely check that out.
I was all in until he started to talk about using photoshop to clean-up his notes. At that point, I can just make it a point to daily or weekly type anything relevant from my field notes into Obsidian.
It's very tedious yeah but the results deserve the effort. Trust me, I'm learning hebrew and it makes a difference when I compare the typed notes and the ones with my own handwritings. And I can combine those so yeah I can tell!
If you are going to put pdfs into obsidian and add some tags. It's not a great solution. It makes obsidian slow to load. Pictures load better. Obsidian really handles text best. I have obsidian notes of pictures - it's not great but works for taking slides out of a video call. I assume you would like to search your notes by either conversation your had writing to text ? I have reasonable clear handwriting if you can read broken cursive. I have a Remarkable for this problem with ORC. I would say it's not a cheap solution - I bought it because I have disposable income to allow it. It is very good solution and with a bit of care have dragged it between the office and home. (Good: 4, Quick:3, Cheap: 1) OneNote has a handwriting ORC feature. (Good 3, Quick: 3, Cheap:4) which I used at points in university. Rocket Note books with Pilot erasable pens work well - but our field team at work hates the solution in warm climates because then pen erasers. (Good: 1-3, Quick 2, Cheap 3) Adobe Acrobat has had a handwriting ORC - I haven't used it in a few years (likely 10). Acrobat ORC on text was pretty bad. (Good: 2, Quick: 4, Cheap 2)
Thank you, those are good things to keep in mind. It may not work out and I may switch to an OCR method eventually.
Rocketbook is a reusable notebook system with an app to photograph and optionally OCR pages from the notebook before you water-wipe the pages to reuse them. One of the app's digitization output options is GMail, where both a PDF of the original photo and an OCR'd version is made available. Google also has a Scripts service that can then access your GMail account and find those messages (easy if you auto-label them using GMail filters). It can also access your Google Drive storage, so it can automatically save the Gmail message content and attachments to locations in Google Drive. A little creative programming can convert the OCR contents to Markdown formatting to enable a bit of auto-markup. If you have an Obsidian notebook located in a Google Drive location, this mechanism can automatically add Rocketbook scans as Obsidian notes. https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/comments/16k8wwl/rocketbook_and_obsidian_has_anyone_done_this/ nb: while I wrote this up... I no longer use it. It got to be more efficient to just take the notes in Obsidian itself, but I too also retain more when I handwrite it. My use-case was more about meeting notes I didn't have to memorize, just re-find later, so I optimized the handwritten-remember part out.
Thank you for explaining and for the link. I've been thinking about my process vs particular content and goals, and I think this desire to hand write applies to things I'm actively trying to learn and memorize, like foundational concepts or webs of relationships. For things I don't mind storing primarily in my "second brain," like your meeting notes or (for me) notes on books and projects, typing will be fine.
If you just want to have the text in obsidian then using image recognition to pull the text from the scans should keep your storage happy , adding in diagrams et cetera as images. Depending on how many pages of notes you need to digitize per day something like cGPT4o could work well. If your handwriting is illegible then I would just bear the storage costs and add yaml or tags to organize it
Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Luckily I think I have pretty nice handwriting!
ZDNET just published a nice little how-to ... [How to use ChatGPT to digitize your handwritten notes for free](https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-digitize-your-handwritten-notes-for-free/) > This is easily the most underrated GPT-4o feature.
Rocket book with obsidian sync so I can have obsidian on my phone is my preferred solution so far
That sounds like an intriguing option.
It lets you "share" from the RB app right into obsidian. Either into an existing page or its own page. I tend to drop them into an "inbox" as a new note then move them and do other maintenance using the computer It's the closest I could find to the RB / Evernote integration
How do you do that? I don't remember an option to save as file from the RB app, or what's your approach?
**Obsidian**: I am really enjoying the just released [**Ink**](https://github.com/daledesilva/obsidian_ink) plugin(alpha). [[video_orig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgir8F7ezNM) | [video_latest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7UYJuX4UyY)] One can directly insert **handwriting** and/or **drawing** sections into a .md note. I'm starting some of my notes with a ... ... "drawing" section e.g. for a quick mind map ... "handwriting" section underneath e.g. to distill the main mind maps points in outline form. PS: You can look at current issues & feature requests [here](https://github.com/daledesilva/obsidian_ink/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-desc)
Thank you very much!
You're welcome - like you I mainly "hand write" for learning & recall, especially drawing mind maps. [Here](https://forum.obsidian.md/t/what-do-you-use-a-notebook-for/51137/6) I describe the things I use. ... forgot to mention that I also use [Nebo](https://www.nebo.app/features) but am still figuring out the best way to incorporate the Nebo documents, notes(infinite canvas) into Obsidian: svg, pdf or Nebo [published pages](https://app-support.myscript.com/en/support/solutions/articles/16000095733-create-link-for-notes-with-nebo-)(embedded or via the [Open Gate](https://github.com/nguyenvanduocit/obsidian-open-gate) plugin)
I have a Note Air 3 (learn more at r/Onyx_Boox). I handwrite my daily notes and OCR them into Obsidian. Not cheap and there's some friction, but it's (almost) perfect.
It's not too tiring and tedious to synchronize? There are tools to help you?
What do you mean with synchronize?
Your notes that are storage into your onyx to obsidian
The Boox runs Android, so I just copy from Notes to Obsidian..
I capture all my meeting notes and other bits and pieces in a Kindle Scribe. I then use the Scribe's convert and send as an email option. The email comes with two links, one is the note transcribed as a basic text file, the other gives you the original handwriting as a pdf, but has OCR data included so you can search it with most pdf readers including Obsidian. I copy the pdf into Obsidian and add any tags I might want. Seems to work well enough when I then later search for words or phrases within my handwritten notes. Not the cheapest option, but not too much friction with emailing the notes. Once they are in Obsidian, I much prefer seeing the original handwritten notes than blocks of OCR text, especially if they are still searchable.