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Question on Scanners and OCR technology

C

Croda

Member
I've got a twenty-some page document that I would love to get an electronic copy of. Rekeying it is not an option that I'm relishing. Is there any scanner/software combo that would allow me to scan the file into 1) Word 2) .pdf 3) some other usefull format? Or am I stuck scanning it into a barely legible .tiff file?

Any comments or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
 
I'm confused. Do you already have a scanner and are asking about software, or are you wanting to purchase a scanner with software?

CBone
 
I don't have either. I assume a scanner is generic enough to work with any such software. But before I buy or look for someone with a scanner, I was curious what was available software-wise. Hope that clarifies.
 
Scanners generally come bundled with OCR software. Some bundled OCR software is better than others though. Here is Link to a review of a few scanners. I generally like Epson for their image quality.

eplebnista
 
Thanks for the replies.

Anyone know anything about non-bundled OCR software and it's capabilities? I don't know if a scanner's quality relates directly to the quality of the OCR read, thus I don't want to buy a super expensive scanner. I'd rather buy the cheaper scanner and the better OCR. I'd love to hear from someone who can speak from experience (not that the other input isn't appreciated 😉 ).
 
Before you go out spending lots o' money...
Dont copy centers have scanners you can rent?

Also, do you need this in an alterable form? If not you can just scan the doc as a picture.
 
Ya, I'd like to be able to alter it. I'll check out OmniPage. Someone else just now mentioned that to me.
 
Jeebus! That OmniPage goes for ~400 bucks! Not worth it for your needs, I bet. I have the cheapy scanner that Staples is currently paying people to take off their hands along with a printer, and you can send the scans to Word/printer/fax/etc. even with that simple software. -15 bucks AR is a pretty good price.

CBone
 
Been doing scanning and OCR work since the late 80s. The technology has gotten very good. I have a fairly old scanner (HP-ScanJet IIcx) built like a tank . . . and I have been constantly upgrading my OCR software. I started with OmniPage Pro version 3 from Caere . . . they since sold to ScanSoft and are now up to version 11. It is simply outstanding. Today I can scan any document quickly and accurately with almost no correction needed. It will scan into any word processor or, as a straight ASCII text file (my preference) that can be opened in any word processor. Today you can buy a decent scanner and it comes bundled with a lite version of OmniPage or some other one . . . Xerox's was good, (Textbridge) but that too got sold.

Your 20 pages would be less than an hours work to scan and edit and finalize in Word, WordPerfect, or . . .? Then it could be printed as a PDF file and be even more electronically transportable.

If you have any academic institution links or friends, the academic version of OPP 11 would definitely be a worthwhile investment. It's accuracy is awesome. And I can remember days when typing the whole page was about as fast as scanning and editing the OCR output. 🙂 Those days are now gone.
 
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