Turn images into editable mind maps
Screenshot of a slide deck. Photo of a whiteboard brainstorm. Scan of a printed outline. Drop any image that contains text into SpawnGraph and it extracts the content and structures it into a mind map you can edit and share. The extraction runs in your browser — no image leaves your device.
How it works
- 1Drop or paste the image. Drag an image file onto the canvas, use the file picker, or paste a screenshot directly from your clipboard with Ctrl+V.
- 2Text is extracted in-browser. SpawnGraph reads the text content from the image. For slides and screenshots of documents, the extraction is typically clean. For whiteboard photos, expect to do some light editing on the output.
- 3Edit the result. Clean up any extraction artifacts, reorganise branches, add context, and share the map — or continue building on it.
What works well
The cleanest results come from images with large, high-contrast text: screenshots of slide presentations, screenshots of web articles or documentation, exported diagrams with text labels, and photos of printed documents or books. If the text is rendered crisply at a readable size, SpawnGraph can extract it reliably. For whiteboard photos, good lighting and a steady camera make a significant difference — a blurry whiteboard photo taken at an angle produces much noisier output than a straight-on, well-lit shot.
Digitalising a hand-drawn mind map
One of the most practical uses: you drew a mind map on paper or a whiteboard during a brainstorm, and now you want a digital, editable version. Take a photo with your phone, transfer the image to your computer, drop it into SpawnGraph. The node text is extracted and placed into an editable digital map. You will usually need to rename a few nodes and rearrange some branches, but the core work of typing out every label manually is done for you. It is faster than rebuilding the map from scratch.
Being honest about the limitations
Image-to-map extraction is not magic. Decorative fonts, low contrast, heavy image compression, and very small text all reduce accuracy. Handwritten cursive is harder than handwritten print. Diagrams where text is rotated or overlapping with graphics are harder than clean linear layouts. For documents where accuracy is critical, the better path is to get the source file (the original .pdf, .docx, or .txt) and use that instead. Image extraction is for when the source file is not available.
Slide deck screenshots as a research tool
Conference presentations are often shared as PDFs or as slide images rather than editable files. Screenshot the key slides, drop them into SpawnGraph, and build a map of the talk's argument without manually transcribing anything. This also works for presentations you attended live and photographed, or webinar slides that were not distributed.
In short: SpawnGraph extracts text from images in-browser and structures it into an editable mind map. Works best with screenshots, slides, and whiteboard photos with clear, high-contrast text. Free, no signup, nothing uploaded to servers.