Best OCR Software for Handwriting

SimpleIndex Cloud OCR

SimpleIndex Cloud OCR adds Amazon AWS Textract OCR to any SimpleIndex workstation or server license.

Textract capabilities include the most accurate OCR and handprint recognition available, automatic form field detection, accounts payable invoice and receipt processing.

Amazon Textract is only available as an API that requires custom programming to make it work. SimpleIndex turns it into a complete document and data capture application designed for easy batch processing on a workstation or server.

Requires an AWS account. Standard Textract transaction fees will apply.

Reading Handprint, Checkmarks, and Forms with FlexiCapture and Vantage

ICR – Intelligent Character Recognition

Intelligent Character Recognition

Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) is an extended technology of the optical character recognition (OCR ). While the OCR technology is designed to extract machine-printed characters, the ICR technology retreives information provided as hand-printed characters

The ICR technology can extract hand-printed characters that are separated and written as individualcharacters in areas/zones – these areas/zones needs to be specified as fixed fields of a machine readable forms. Alternativelly, they need to be automatically detected.

Example of a form containing hand-printed characters:

Important note: ICR is not able to extract texts in “cursive handwriting” as in this example:

In most cases, the ICR technology is linked to Field Level / Zonal Recognition and forms processing.
To enhance the ICR recognition accuracy, it is recommended to use meta data, for example regular expressions, dictionaries or database lookups.

ICR in ABBYY SDKs

The following ABBYY SDKs and products support ICR

FineReader Engine
Since the version 12, Release 3, ICR is as well included in the Linux version. Since the Release 4 of the version 12, it is as well included in the Mac version of FineReader Engine (in lower versions, the ICR technology was only supported in the Windows version.
FlexiCapture SDK – this SDK is designed for forms processing and data extraction, ICR and template matching for fixed forms are part of the default feature set. In addition, ABBYY offers this technology as a product in form of the FlexiCapture platform.

Cloud OCR SDK – the ABBYY OCR service, allows reading zones that contain hand-printed, separated characters. This online OCR service […]

ABBYY FlexiCapture SDK On-Premise

ABBYY FlexiCapture SDK enables software developers to quickly create applications that extract meaning from documents. FlexiCapture SDK is ideal for system integrators, developers, and service providers who want to integrate powerful data capture capabilities into their solutions. Through the use of ABBYY’s machine learning and AI, end customers are able to process more transactions, faster, and with fewer errors, improving customer service, reducing costs, and making smarter process decisions.

FlexiCapture SDK, as a delivery option of the FlexiCapture platform, provides developers with a powerful and flexible toolkit to smoothly integrate ABBYY’s industry-leading data capture technologies to empower their own products and services according to vertical market needs.

Licensing is based on number of developers for the base SDK, then annual page counts for the perpetual license. All of the functionality supported by ABBYY FlexiCapture is included in the license, with a few exceptions.

ABBYY Cloud OCR SDK

ABBYY® Cloud OCR SDK is a web-based document processing service that will enhance your enterprise software systems, SaaS platforms, or your mobile apps with the ability to convert documents and utilize textual information from scans, PDFs, document images, smartphone photos, or screenshots.

Combining ABBYY’s latest AI-based technologies for information extraction with the highly scalable processing power of the Microsoft® Azure® computing infrastructure, this secure and reliable ABBYY cloud service can be easily integrated into your application via a REST API—empowering it to precisely convert virtually any number of pages within the shortest amount of time.

OCR Consulting Services

OCR Experts for Any Project

Our unique team of OCR experts are equipped to help out with OCR projects of any size or complexity. We have support specialists that can remotely configure desktop solutions in a matter of minutes and expert systems integrators with years of programming, database design, and robotic process automation experience.

Desktop OCR

Use our online store to order desktop OCR applications and our staff will be happy to answer your setup questions via email or web chat.

Remote configuration and training services using GotoMeeting are available for a low hourly rate.

Let Us OCR That For You

Got a one-time conversion and don’t want to hassle with software? Upload your scanned document to us and we’ll send back the converted files. Optional verification service corrects recognition errors and layout issue for a low hourly rate.

Data processing for forms, reports, directories, and other documents is also available with output to CSV, Excel, XML, JSON, SQL, etc.

Contact us and if possible provide a sample, total pages, desired output and whether you want us to correct the results after OCR and we’ll reply back with a quote right away. Prices start at $50 for up to 1,000 pages.

Batch Scanning & OCR Servers

Automate document scanning and digital document archival processes using zone OCR, barcode recognition, database integration and other technologies.

Small business systems and single document workflows can be setup remotely via GotoMeeting, usually in just a few hours. Chat now if we’re online or leave a message to schedule a consultation.

Data Capture and Forms Processing

Advanced data extraction solutions that can turn the most complex documents into structured data ready […]

Why are the prices of OCR applications so different?

OCR software ranges in price from freeware all the way up to tens of thousands of dollars. What explains the difference between these applications? Here’s the breakdown:

OCR Freeware uses the SimpleOCR or Tesseract engines and provide limited scanning and output format capabilities. Recognition quality is generally poor except for the highest quality document images.
PDF OCR Converters provide good quality OCR engines like ABBYY, IRIS and OmniPage, but limit the output to searchable PDF files. These cost less than $100.
Standard OCR applications range from $100-$200 and provide full OCR capabilities including converting scans to Word, Excel, HTML and other editable formats.
Corporate OCR applications add advanced features like automated hotfolder processing, concurrent licensing and other features useful for business applications. Pricing for these is $200-$500.
OCR Servers provide scalable, enterprise OCR services for processing very high volumes of documents or providing OCR capabilities to users throughout the organization. Prices start around $1,500 and go up based on processing volume.
Enterprise Data Capture and Forms Processing applications are used to capture structured data from complex documents like healthcare claim forms and invoices that include things like tables, handwriting, checkboxes, and movable zones. These solutions can cost anywhere from around $1,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the document volume and complexity of the project.

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Creating forms optimized for handprint recognition

Handprint recognition applications can provide dramatically different results in terms of accuracy depending on whether the form is designed with intelligent character recognition (ICR) in mind.

Forms Processing applications like ABBYY FlexiCapture have a built-in form design tool with ICR-optimized field layout elements and rules that validate whether your form uses best practices for recognition. These forms can be automatically converted to recognition templates for scanning for data capture. This saves you dozens of hours of trial and error during the design process and even more in data entry once the filled in forms are collected.

Best practice recommendations for ICR and OCR forms include:

Plenty of space between form elements and labels, at least 0.5cm / 0.25in
Use drop out colors for form backgrounds when possible
Hand printed characters should be constrained with boxes or combs to force filler to write legible, separated, printed characters
Use check boxes instead of handprint when possible since these are nearly 100% accurate
Use numeric codes instead of alphanumeric text when possible to reduce the number of possible characters and increase accuracy
Use validation rules to check against possible values and flag data with incorrect values
Check box fields can be used to verify the presence of signatures

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ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud delivers ABBYY’s advanced data capture platform capabilities via REST API and web interfaces. ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud customers can rapidly configure and deliver their Content IQ solution, taking advantage of our cloud services to automate and accelerate their document-driven processes. The advanced machine learning and AI in the platform improve classification and data extraction results, enabling core processes to support better, smarter, faster decisions.

FlexiCapture Cloud enables organizations to accelerate digital transformation by complementing their automation systems with new and advanced cognitive capabilities that liberate the intelligence locked in their documents.

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ABBYY FlexiCapture On-Premise

ABBYY FlexiCapture On-Premise – Distributed – Perpetual License PPY 50K Pages

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a powerful data capture and document processing solution from a world-leading technology vendor. It is designed to transform streams of documents of any structure and complexity into business-ready data. And its award-winning recognition technologies, automatic document classification, plus a highly scalable and customizable architecture, mean that it can help companies and organizations of any size to streamline their business processes, increase efficiency and reduce costs.

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Handprint Recognition Guide

What is ICR, Handprint Recognition?

ICR stands for Intelligent Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret hand printed text on scanned images.

Forms Processing Software uses ICR technology to automate data entry tasks involving hand-filled surveys, applications and forms. It provides interfaces for scanning, recognition, data verification and export, as well as management and monitoring tools to track large volumes of documents and data through the workflow.

Forms Processing also includes OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology to recognize machine printed text, and OMR (Optical Mark Recognition) for check boxes and multiple choice bubbles.

Traditional forms processing relies on constrained handwriting, where boxes on the form force the filler to write with separated, printed block characters. Modern AI technology has dramatically improved the ability to recognized unconstrained handwriting and cursive script. Hand printed notes, free-form comments blocks, non-segmented fields, historic documents, and more can now be converted to text with acceptable accuracy where these were impossible just a few years ago.

Who can benefit from handwritten recognition software?

Any organization that collects data on paper-based forms, surveys or applications on a regular basis can get a very high return on investment by automating the data entry with forms processing software.

You do need to have a significant number of forms to justify the expense, at least a hundred forms per month or more depending on how much data is being captured. If the data entry task can be done in under 25 working hours then it is probably not a good candidate for automation with ICR software.

Organizations that have many separate departments that collect data on forms can share the budget for forms processing software by re-using it for other projects. Your current project may not be big enough to justify […]

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ABBYY OCR

ABBYY is one of the leading OCR (Optical Character Recognition) companies in a world. They offer a large variety of document capture and automation products starting with FineReader Pro for individual or small business scale companies and FineReader Corporate. If you need to process many thousands or millions of pages, ABBYY has FineReader Server for full-text OCR and FlexiCapture for OCR data capture. Many companies are using their products for its flexibility and scalability, there is always a way to customize ABBYY OCR products to fit your automation needs.

ABBYY FineReader OCR software helps individuals turn scans of paper documents, PDF files, and digital photographs into searchable and editable formats. Unmatched text recognition accuracy and document conversion capabilities virtually eliminate retyping and reformatting. Intuitive use and one-click automated conversion tasks let you do more with this OCR software in fewer steps. Up to 190 languages supported for text recognition and document conversion – absolute record on OCR/PDF software market!

ABBYY FlexiCapture is a powerful data capture and document processing solution. It is designed to transform streams of documents of any structure and complexity into business-ready data. Solid recognition technologies, automatic document classification and a highly scalable and customizable architecture, will allow it to help companies and organizations of any size to streamline their business processes, increase efficiency and reduce costs.

ABBYY FineReader Server is powerful server-based OCR software for automated document capture and PDF conversion. Designed for mid- to high-volume batch processing, it enables organizations and scanning service providers to establish cost-efficient processes for converting paper, as well as TIFF, JPEG, and PDF image documents into electronic files suitable for full-text search and long-term digital archiving.

ScanStore and SimpleSoftware are highly experienced integrators of ABBYY […]

OCR Guide

Optical Character Recognition

During your foray into the world of document scanning, you’ve likely encountered the term “OCR” and may even know that it stands for “Optical Character Recognition“. But what exactly is OCR and how can you make the best use of this sophisticated and valuable tool?

We’re here to give you a run-down of what you need to know about Optical Character Recognition, answer any questions you might have, and recommend the best OCR software solution for your scanning project.

Table of Contents:

What is OCR?
OCR Output Types
Limitations of OCR
OCR for Business
Levels of OCR Software
Improving OCR Accuracy
Desktop OCR Software Comparison
Feature Comparison Chart
OCR Apps and Descriptions

What is OCR?

What Is OCR Barcode Scanning Recognition Software The primary purpose of Optical Character Recognition is to quickly and automatically scanned or photographed document images into machine readable text that can be searched for keywords or edited in a word processor.

In general, an OCR engine analyzes the pixel data of scanned images and searches for patterns resembling letters, numbers, and other symbols to create a digitized record of characters.

The biggest OCR engines employ huge Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) models that have been trained on billions of documents collected over decades of development.

While the exact mechanics of this process can be complicated, OCR engines are a key automation tool for the digital age. It bridges the gap between knowledge stored on physical documents and digital data that can be edited, searched or parsed into structured data to automate data entry tasks.

OCR Output Types

Full Page OCR converts the entire document into one of the following formats:

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ICR – Intelligent Character Recognition

Intelligent Character Recognition

ICR in ABBYY SDKs

OCR Experts for Any Project

Let Us OCR That For You

Batch Scanning & OCR Servers

Data Capture and Forms Processing

ABBYY FlexiCapture Cloud

ABBYY FlexiCapture On-Premise – Distributed – Perpetual License PPY 50K Pages

What is ICR, Handprint Recognition?

Who can benefit from handwritten recognition software?

Optical Character Recognition

What is OCR?

OCR Output Types

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