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

[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.