Is OmniPage Pro 14 overkill or will Microsoft's built document scanning feature be good e'nuf?

[aic]

Thanks.

 

[CaseTragedy]

depends on what you need to do.
built in scanning works just fine--unless you need an OCR.

-Case

 

[aic]

Originally posted by: CaseTragedy
depends on what you need to do.
built in scanning works just fine--unless you need an OCR.

-Case

Can you elaborate on "unless you need OCR"?

 

[CaseTragedy]

Originally posted by: aic

Originally posted by: CaseTragedy
depends on what you need to do.
built in scanning works just fine--unless you need an OCR.

-Case

Can you elaborate on "unless you need OCR"?

OCR = optical character recognization
after scanning docs, OCR will try to recognize the characters in the image so that you can edit it (in a text editor)
so Omnipage/Omniform is good if you need to scan documents/forms and edit them.
but the built-in one is just fine if you're scanning photos.


-Case

 

[aic]

Thanks. My goal is too scan mounds of paperwork (bills, statements, invoices,...etc.). I got an Epson 3170 and I will scan pictures too. But I have to buy Office 2003 to get the scanning function.

Epson gave me ABBYY but the ABBYY FAQ states that it is a lite version and does not do very well. I tried to scan a payroll stub which had a graphic of the check and ABBYY could not handle it. I assume Office 2003 will be able to handle it. Too bad I can't download the feature from Microsoft and used it Office 2000.

Office 2003 will allow me to scan and reopen the file to add more scans (per Microsoft) so that is a good feature.

 

[CaseTragedy]

Yeah...I don't think there are any free scanning solutions for Office 2000. If you have Windows XP--you can always try the built-in scanner for that. Of course without Office XP, you won't have any OCR functionality--but it sounds like you're just keeping electronic backups of your paperwork--so you probably won't need an OCR anyways.


-Case

 

[gunblade]

I think Omnipage Pro is very useful. Certain time, you just have the need to OCR hard copy into PDF or word to edit them. The scanning as photo sometimes doesn't allow easy editting or modification on the document or form.

Too bad I can't afford the new Omnipage.

 

[KingNothing]

Don't bother doing optical character recognition, it'll be more of a headache than it's worth with any program. Just save all the pages as JPGs and import them with your favorite graphics editor using the TWAIN driver. That's what I do with all my paperwork and it works great.

 

[dman]

Originally posted by: KingNothing
Don't bother doing optical character recognition, it'll be more of a headache than it's worth with any program. Just save all the pages as JPGs and import them with your favorite graphics editor using the TWAIN driver. That's what I do with all my paperwork and it works great.

I really haven't had a case where OCR was quicker than just retyping a doc, if I needed to do some editing. However, I'm a reasonably fast typist. If you are slow or hunt/peck it might be an advantage. I think OP11 was the last version I tried and I doubt it's improved that much, since it hardly improved from each of the previous versions.

Problems is with multi column documents, like something from a magazine, you'd have to figure out the document formatting as well which is a PITA. It OCR's it ok but then trying to edit it gets to be an experience.

I haven't tried Office 2003 though, maybe it's good.