The November Free OCR API update adds two often requested features:
Easier authentication via request header
Base 64 support for sending images
The API url and format has not changed. Also, we still support the old authentication methods. So, unless you decide to make use of the new features, this upgrade will be 100% transparent to you.
In more details:
New Authentication
The api-key is now submitted via the header. Here is how it looks in Postman:
When you copy the command, make sure you do not insert line breaks by mistake.
Base64 has one small drawback and that is the image size. As a rule of thumb, images send via Base64 are 30% larger than their directly uploaded counterpart. Or in others words, each of the three supported image upload methods (URL, direct upload and Base64) has its own distinct advantage, depending on your use case.