Cheap OCR

[ffutures]

As part of the move to a "new" PC I've been looking at some of my older software and deciding whether or not to upgrade it. One was the OCR software I use, Omnipage Pro. I've been using version 13 for several years, and it worked pretty well, but I thought I might as well check. With interesting results...

Upgrade to the current version 17 is about a hundred pounds, way over my budget. But you can buy the OEM release of version 15 on eBay for £20. For that you get everything I got first time around except Paperport, an archiving program for images, which I've never found very useful. Three guesses which one I went for...

So if you want some pretty good PC OCR software, I can recommend this vendor - I think he still has quite a few left...

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Omnipage-Professional-15-New-Sealed-/390063828222?pt=UK_Computing_Software_Software_SR&hash=item5ad19dacfe

Comments

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Starting with Acrobat 8 I've been able to give up on OCR software: it does a great job on its own.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've never tried direct to Acrobat - How accurate is its text recognition?

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

I've done two books with it, and it was better (and easier to use) than Omnipage or another program I've used (the name escapes me right now).

I did Cossack Girl with it, frex.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

You're right - that's a bit slower than Omnipage but VERY accurate. I'm impressed!

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I didn't know about it, but a reader asked why I hadn't turned that on for the Space 1889 PDFs... the answer was that I'd done them back in the previous century, before Acrobat had this feature. Since then I've been using it a lot, and it works great.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I never even noticed, because I usually start with a Word file first.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The OCR software I'm using just now is Real Reader 6.0 Lite, the freeware version. The big advantage for me over other OCR packages is that it performs OCR on Japanese text, all three scripts, and quite competently.

I bought an Opticbook Pro book scanner a few weeks back and it came with ABBYY Fine 6.0 OCR software. I've not used it much -- it doesn't scan as far into the gutter margins of glued paperbacks as I thought it would but it does an OK jon on sewn hardbacks.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That's a shame - that was the main selling point, I thought.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The main use I planned to make of the Opticbook was to scan manga books which are almost always glued paperbacks. Sometimes the artwork goes all the way into the gutter and occasionally there will be a double-page spread and the Opticbook doesn't cope with those edge cases too well. I find rolling the spine of paperbacks and applying generous hand-pressure on the lid of my regular flatbed scanner gets rid of most of the gutter artefacts and the rest of the problems can be dealt with by photoediting the pages.

http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee12/nojay_photo/Odds%20and%20Sods/p166-167.jpg

is a double-page spread of the credits page from Kabu no Isaki which I cut-and-shut from two flatbed scans. The Opticbook would have truncated the middle parts of the two pages.

The best method of scanning manga, although I'm very loath to do this for some weird reason, is to debind the book by melting the glue in a microwave oven and separating out the individual pages while it's still hot. I really must study up on book-binding techniques...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

OK, doesn't rule it out for me then - I had a LOT of trouble getting the HP scanner installed this time around, I think some Activex thingies have changed that were in my previous XP install.