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February 13, 2009
OCR is getting quite good
I recently upgraded from the free ScanSoft OmniPage SE 4.0 that came with my scanner to the full power OmniPage Professional 16.
The former was decent. I liked the work flow, but the inability to designate regions of the document at spreadsheet or text meant that when I scanned a table, significant effort was still required to get the data into a usable form. Often I had to copy the data into a text file, replace tabs with spaces or commas, and line things up. A lot better than typing it all myself, but still a hassle.
However, when I upgraded to OmniPage Professional 16, not only was the work flow identical, but now I could specify the regions holding tables and text, and the OCR was even better. Now a simple copy and past of the results into a spreadsheet. The program did have the ability to export the results as a spreadsheet too, but that didn't work as well. That process just exported a series of cells containing an entire table's data in one cell. Still, the process is now a lot faster and more accurate, and I would now consider scanning a document to avoid retyping its contents a real alternative.
Now if only Webdrive didn't suck so much.
Posted by OneEyedMan at February 13, 2009 7:45 AM
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