OCR software

Jem8472

Does anyone use ORC software?

Is it anygood?
Can you scan in a page of text and put it into ms word or something like that? Or does it come out as an image file?

I have got a copy of my grandads book which has been typed up on a typewriter. I have put one part onto computer by just typing it while reading, but that takes a long time. Also the other part of the book is 400 pages long front and back. :eek: Big time RSI if I try and retype that!!!


I would like to try and get his book published somehow so I need to get it into a format that will aid that.

Also as a side note, does anyone work at any book publishers? Haveing some contacts would help a lot

espresso

Yes it does work providing that you scan at a high enough resolution i.e. 300 dpi. Results may vary slightly, depending on the font used on the original scanned text but generally it works very well. It creates text from the scanned image, so yes you can import into any text based application. Try using this free OCR software. I don't use it myself but others have said that it works well - wouldn't be much use if it didn't!

Jem8472

ok thanks will have to try it out

patwa_2

Yes, OCR does work but as said above the results are dependant on not only the software and hardware used, but also the quality of the printed documents.

Two of the most recognised Software titles are Scansoft's Omnipage and Abbyy's FineReader Pro. I use FineReader myself, and I would say it's well worth the money if you decide to buy it.

You also need a decent scanner with the ability to scan at least 300dpi. If you're going to be scanning books, you'll also want one with as narrow an 'edge' as possible, so that you can lay the book flat on the scanning surface without breaking the spine. Last year I bought a PlusTek Opticbook Plus for £136, and again I'd recommend it to anyone who can afford it. It is designed specifically for book scanning, you can 'hang' the book and the spine sits at 90 degrees to the page, meaning that there is no pressure applied to it, and the entire page gets scanned with no shadows on the sides of the page.

You want to scan at a minimum of 300dpi, I found 400dpi worked well for typeface print on 'matt' coloured/type pages (such as the paperback fiction books a la Mills and Boon (thinking of my mum's books which she used to read). For normal white paper documents, 300dpi works OK. If you're scanning handwriting, you'll want higher than 400dpi, of course remember that the higher the resolution the longer it'll take to scan. A 300dpi takes my scanner about 3-4 seconds, 400dpi is about 10-12 seconds.

Lighting is also important. You want as good a contrast as possible between the scanning lamp and the book, so you may wish to scan somewhere where the light is dimmer, and avoid direct light falling on the scanning plate. Experiment to find whatever suits you.

When you get going with it you'll soon develop a rythm for turning the pages. I can usually get 200-250 pages done in an hour. The good thing with programs such as those I mentioned above is that you can do the actual scanning in one 'batch', and then go and do any spelling/formatting corrections, rather than doing it one page at a time. Getting a good scan and turn rythm going also avoids the tendancy to accidentally scan the same page twice or miss a page, although FineReader will flag a warning if this happens.

Hope this helps.

H.

Jem8472

Yes that is a big help, The book I want to scan is just loose leaf in a binder so I wont have a problem like you woould with a book.

Thanks for all the help

Jem8472

Just been looking into the free software and I found it to be useless.

I had a look at some proper stuff to buy and one of them Abbyy finereader 8 does a try and buy.

Well I have just put a page in to do the OCR and it read it in about 1 second and got the page perfect.

I am mega impressed with that software. Also just looked its only £89 for the download edition.

espresso

Jem8472 wrote: »

Just been looking into the free software and I found it to be useless.

Why?

Others have found that it works well see here.

Competitive accuracy on most documents
OCR scanned images or existing TIFF, BMP or JPG files
English (US & UK), French and Dutch dictionaries
Interactive verification and correction
Output to plain text or formatted rich text (Word)
Includes a 15-day demo of CharacTell's SoftWriting handprint recognition (ICR) software
Expiration date does not affect machine print recognition (OCR)

Jem8472

I found that when it read the document it got about........ 0% right

where as finereader got it 100%. same scan just different software.

espresso

I use PaperPort myself, so can't really comment on the others mentioned but I find it hard to believe that it just doesn't work!

Jem8472

who knows. Anyway thanks for the help. Hopefully I can get through this book quickly and I can look at trying to get it published somehow.