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| Thread ID: 56044 | 2005-03-25 19:02:00 | OCR Advances | Strommer (42) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 338065 | 2005-03-25 19:02:00 | OCR, Optical Character Recognition, is used by scanning a book, magazine, or other text, which results in a text document that can then be stored or manipulated as MS Word, an RTF file, or whatever. I have an old scanner, circa 1998. It is large compared to today's sleek models but still does the job OK. OCR software is Text Bridge Classic. I noticed a significant improvement in OCR efficiency (less spelling errors) when I updated my computer from Win98 400Mhz Celeron to WinXP 3GHz 1G RAM. BTW, I believe my old scanner has an optical resolution of 300 x 600 dpi, which was average for its time. Here is my question: would it be worthwhile for me to update my scanner, and if so, could I get by with a run of the mill scanner, e.g. under $150? Essentially, I am wondering what progress has been made in scanner + OCR technology over the last 6 years or so...?? One weakness with my present set up is that scanning/OCR newspaper articles is hopeless - mostly gibberish results in spite of fiddling with settings. Any comments on your use of OCR would be appreciated. Thanks, Steve_L |
Strommer (42) | ||
| 338066 | 2005-03-25 21:24:00 | Finereader OCR software by Abbyy is worth trying. Version 4 was on the cover disk of PCPlus magazine March 2002. IMHO much better than Text Bridge or Omnipage versions of that era. | PaulD (232) | ||
| 338067 | 2005-03-25 21:27:00 | I've used Omnipage Pro 12. Does a pretty good job of scanning/recognising text. Not 100% accurate. BUT there's not too many errors to correct, after text is scanned. And it also installs a few macros in Word / MS Office, so u can scan from within Word and then it dumps the finished text in Word. Then u save it. You could get a scanner like this www.edenonline.co.nz $131-132 inc GST. A Canon which can save files as PDF. This scanner is 600*1200 dpi. Depends if your scanner is parallel. If it is, then yup get a USB scanner, if your PC supports USB. |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 338068 | 2005-03-25 23:07:00 | The limitation is more driven by the quality of the text to be scanned than the actual scanner. OCR programs available for the home user are also all fairly basic and minimal in effectiveness, commensurate with the cost. Commercial applications can cost over $100,000 - these OCR programs work quite well with drum type high speed scanners. |
godfather (25) | ||
| 338069 | 2005-03-26 00:06:00 | Hi Speedy. I'm intrigued. How does the scanner have anything to do with saving as PDF? A Canon which can save files as PDF. :cool: |
Scouse (83) | ||
| 338070 | 2005-03-26 01:23:00 | Well if u went to the link thats what this scanner does with one of its buttons. Scan and it saves as PDF. SteveL was after a scanner for under $150, so I gave him a link for one. |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 338071 | 2005-03-26 02:21:00 | Hi Speedy. Thanks. I wasn't poking the borax - and I'm still intrigued. Thinking out loud that if the copier created and saved a PDF document, the user would not only need a (free) PDF reader but would also need a PDF creator/writer to be able to modify it in any way. And, if the scanner was in some way using the OCR facility then the user would definitely have to have PDF read/write access to modify the cock-ups that even the best domestic versions of OCR create. Interesting. :cool: | Scouse (83) | ||
| 338072 | 2005-03-26 02:27:00 | One program I absolutely DON'T recommend is Adobe Capture Version 3. At work we "upgraded" from 2. A few months later, after writing to Adobe pointing out it's numerous flaws and unusability, we went back to version 2. |
Mercury (1316) | ||
| 338073 | 2005-03-26 02:35:00 | Hi Speedy. Thanks. I wasn't poking the borax - and I'm still intrigued. Thinking out loud that if the copier created and saved a PDF document, the user would not only need a (free) PDF reader but would also need a PDF creator/writer to be able to modify it in any way. And, if the scanner was in some way using the OCR facility then the user would definitely have to have PDF read/write access to modify the cock-ups that even the best domestic versions of OCR create. Interesting. :cool: The PDF document created is simply a "picture" of the original, embedded as a PDF. It cannot be extracted or modified with a PDF editor anyway as it contains no editable text, just a single image. It has not actually been OCR'd in the conversion. If that is all that is required, the same can be achieved by inserting a .jpg or .tif image in a Word document. It is a high security way of distributing a document as it contains no text that anyone can use. It is also a nuisance for the same reason. |
godfather (25) | ||
| 338074 | 2005-03-26 02:49:00 | Thanks gf. The device might as well be labelled to create a standard copy of the document as a jpg. As far as I can see, the PDF talk is pure crap and advertising nonesense. :rolleyes: | Scouse (83) | ||
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