I am looking for a low cost (preferably even free) software that can take as :
Input - a JPEG image
Output - any numbers that appear on that JPEG image

For example if you look at the following UPC image : 
http://www.jptoys.com/toys/jpjunior/liliguanodon/upc_lowres.jpg
It would return as output the numbers in the image which in this example image is:
076930025390

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 30 Apr 2004 19:49 PDT

gvarun-ga,

Just about any OCR software program should be able to accept a JPEG
file (that you have saved to your hard drive) as input and "scan" it
to read the text.

Have you tried this option?

Trouble is, most web pictures such as the one in your example are not
high-enough resolution to really allow for faithful scanning, so it's
hard to trust the text output that results.

Let us know what sort of things you've tried thus far.

goto http://www.softeksoftware.co.uk/windows.html click on "download
the software" and install the "Demo barcode toolkit"  you're supposed
to pay money if you like it, but it doesn't state whether it expires
or not.  possibly the $100 item is more advanced and is supposed to be
used for scanning actual barcodes (ie cashier).  anyways, for the
image you provided, in order for it to detect the number i had to do
the following: click "options" and click the check box for "UPC-A" and
in the "image processing" tab, check "no quiet zone (slow)".  this
type of barcode is a UPC-A, and because of the way the image is, you
have to click "no quiet zone".  also, if you're going to test other
images, i suggest check boxing every "barcode type" and make sure the
"quiet zone" is checked too.  the only problem with that is: for
example, the image you provided "finds" another barcode when UPC-E is
marked.  it makes one out of a portion from the UPC code, so, that
isn't supposed to be there, but if you evaluate each image, you'll
find the correct numbers.  hope this helps.