[DIRECT] Can Turnitin Read Images? What Students & Educators Should Know?

As we all know it Turnitin excels at detecting copied or unoriginal text. However, is it the same for images? The short answer is NO. The longer answer is the devil lies in the details. Keep reading to know more about it.

Turnitin is widely recognized as a powerful online plagiarism detection service used by schools, universities, and even professional organizations. It does a superb job at scanning typed, selectable text against a huge database of websites, academic publications, and previously submitted student papers. In other words, it thrives on textual content.

But the question many students ask is, “Can Turnitin detect the text in screenshots, scanned images, or pictures of typed text?” This post will explain what Turnitin can & cannot do, along with some practical tips for both students and educators who are curious about the platform’s limitations.

What Is Turnitin and How Does It Work?

Turnitin’s main function is to generate a Similarity Report by comparing your submission to its massive repository (web pages, journals, older student papers, etc). It flags any matching passages and calculates a “similarity score,” which is basically a statistical measure of how many words or phrases in your document match something from their database. That is what leads to you seeing a percentage showing how much of your work is similar to external sources.

On top of that, Turnitin has recently introduced an AI-writing detection feature, but let’s be honest, its core purpose is—and always has been—identifying textual plagiarism. Turnitin can read typed text easily but doesn’t interpret images. It simply shows them as placeholders that instructors can view but which the system doesn’t analyze.

Text vs. Images: How Turnitin Treats Different Content

1. Typed text gets fully scanned and matched.
2. Any captions or labels you add under images also gets checked.
3. Image objects like screenshots, scanned pages, or charts remain invisible to the plagiarism engine.
4. The similarity score reflects only what Turnitin can actively read, which is the text layer.

So, if you submit a paper that looks 10 pages long but it’s basically all screenshots or pictures, Turnitin will show an extremely low word count and a minimal similarity score. It might appear suspicious to your educator.

Can Turnitin Detect Text Embedded in Images?

The short answer is NO. If you take a paragraph from Wikipedia and paste it as a screenshot, Turnitin sees only an “image file.” It can’t interpret those pixels as letters or words. This means any text hidden inside images (like decorative WordArt or scanned PDFs with no text layer) slip under Turnitin’s radar.

Does Turnitin Use OCR to Read Images?

Turnitin does not have built-in Optical Character Recognition (OCR). OCR helps in extracting text from images or scanned documents, but Turnitin currently lacks that capability.

Hence, if it is not made to accomplish this task it wont be able to do it. The company hasn’t announced any upcoming OCR integration, probably because they are focusing more on text matching and AI essays detection. In the meantime, if you upload scanned PDFs with no selectable text, Turnitin will yield no meaningful similarity results.

What Happens if You Try to Beat Turnitin by Submitting Images of Text?

• Turnitin can’t read the text, but it notices if the page count is huge and the word count is abnormally low.
• Many instructors have file-type restrictions (like .docx or text-based PDFs only), so your image-only submission might be flagged or even scored zero.
• You might pass Turnitin’s automated check, but your educator can see that the text is not highlightable. That’s usually enough to suspect cheating.

Turnitin’s Capabilities and Limitations

Below is a quick overview of the major differences in how Turnitin handles content:

Practical Advice for Students

1. Don’t rely on images of text to beat Turnitin. Instructors will likely catch on, and it’s considered academic misconduct in many institutions.
2. When you genuinely need to include images, make sure to add captions, references, and proper citations.
3. Plagiarism remains plagiarism even if you trick the software. Honesty is the best way to uphold academic integrity.
4. If your assignment genuinely requires you to submit scanned or handwritten work (e.g., math problems), clarify it with your teacher and follow the correct file format.

Practical Advice for Educators

1. Restrict file uploads to text-based formats like .docx or searchable PDFs. This ensures Turnitin has actual text to read.
2. Immediately check if you can highlight the text in the Turnitin viewer. If you can’t, it’s likely an image-based submission.
3. Examine the ratio of images to text. A suspiciously low word count combined with multiple pages might signal attempted cheating.
4. Spell it out in the syllabus: purely image-based submissions may be treated as non-submissions or misconduct.
5. Manually check zero-similarity reports that look too polished for a student’s usual level.
6. Stay informed about Turnitin’s future updates in case they adopt OCR or more advanced image-analysis features.

Conclusion

So, can Turnitin read images? Absolutely not. Screenshots, scanned pages, and text embedded in pictures remain invisible to Turnitin’s algorithm. While this might tempt some users to hide plagiarized content within images, it’s a risky strategy. In the end, educators have plenty of ways to spot such attempts, and the academic penalties can be severe.

My single opinion on this is that it is never a good idea to rely on silly tricks like image-based text to avoid plagiarism detection. Cheating ultimately hurts you more than anyone else. If you want success in your academic or professional life, make sure everything you submit is legitimately yours. Turnitin or no Turnitin, integrity always pays off in the long run.