OCR Guide

What is OCR?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition and is the technology that allows software to interpret text on scanned images. When this technology is applied to automating business data entry processes it’s referred to as OCR Data Capture.

Many are familiar with popular desktop OCR applications designed to convert scanned images to editable documents. When this process is applied to specific areas of the document containing data fields it’s called zone OCR. But OCR data capture software is more than just simple zone OCR. Modern applications use some or all of these technologies:

Handprint recognition (ICR or Intelligent Character Recognition) for forms processing.
Advanced rules-based templates for locating common data elements on pages with different layouts and formatting.
Artificial intelligence that is able to use point and click user feedback to train recognition templates automatically.
Natural language processing is able to interpret paragraphs of text and extract meaningful data from them.
Robotic process automation puts back office integration into the hands of power users instead of programmers.
Preconfigured form templates and business rules for common applications like invoice processing and healthcare claim forms.

80%

Using the OCR software enables enterprises to reduce the document processing time by as much as 80%

Benefits of using OCR

If not for the trees then do it for the savings on paper, toner, copiers and their services contracts, etc.

How much time is wasted searching for paper files? Digital documents can searched and viewed instantly from anywhere.

Paper is much harder to backup and restore than digital data.

Office square footage and off-site records storage adds to the cost of keeping paper documents.

Government mandates for records retention […]

PDF Processing with FineReader and FineReader Server

How to create a PDF from Microsoft® Word, Excel, or PowerPoint

How to convert emails to PDF

How to Split a PDF

Create new PDF documents or separate PDF documents combined in one easily with FineReader PDF 15.

Learn how to split PDFs and extract pages easily.

How to create and edit interactive PDF forms

Watch this video and see how to edit and create interactive PDF forms quickly and easily.

Form Editor tool in FineReader PDF 15 allows creating and editing fillable PDF forms with text and date fields, dropdown lists, list boxes, checkmarks, radio buttons, signature fileds and action buttons. Collect information and create effective document templates with ease!

How to extract text from scanned PDFs

How to extract tables

How can I verify if the digital signature is valid?

If you open a document with a valid digital signature in FineReader, you will see a green notification Valid on the left panel of ABBYY FineReader PDF 15:

Recognizing a document with existing text layer in FineReader PDF 15

Open FineReader PDF 15;
Go to Tools > Options > OCR;
In the PDF recognition mode select Use OCR option:
Click OK;
Recognize your document again.

How to convert a document into an accessible PDF/UA

Make your mixed documents—PDF, scanned, photographed, or papers— digital and accessible.

In this […]

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.

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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Kofax OmniPage – Ultimate

Kofax OmniPage Ultimate has several unique features that make it stand out for a variety of applications. Some of these include auto-redaction, SharePoint integration, automatic filing with barcodes, PDF auto-bookmarking, form data collection and MFP support. Most of these new features are not available in the Standard edition.

Kofax OmniPage – Standard

Kofax OmniPage Standard converts paper, picture, and PDF files into editable documents to save you considerable time and money by eliminating retyping. Your documents look just like the original – complete with text, tables, and graphics. OmniPage uses superior character accuracy to precisely format your documents so you can easily make changes.

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 […]

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate, 1 Year Subscription

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate, (1 Year Subscription) is an all-in-one business toolset for working with PDFs and document digitization. With FineReader PDF employees can work with both digitally created and scanned paper documents to fulfill various document-related tasks in the digital workplace effortlessly. ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Corporate allows you to view, edit, search, comment and collaborate, sign and protect PDFs or compare document versions in different file formats to identify differences efficiently. Thanks to the seamlessly integrated AI-based OCR technology with FineReader you can also extract information from a PDF or convert the entire document to Word, Excel® for further editing. Document conversion can also be automated to prepare multiple documents for further processing.

Demo and Additional Materials

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Standard, 1 Year Subscription

ABBYY FineReader PDF 15 Standard, (1 Year Subscription) is a PDF software application for working with PDF documents and scans. Powered by ABBYY’s AI-based OCR technology it allows you to convert and edit not only digital PDF documents, but also scanned paper documents with the same ease-of-use. With FineReader PDF you can view, edit, search, comment, sign, protect, extract text from PDFs and convert documents into Word, Excel® for further editing.

Demo and Additional Materials

Convert Image to Excel

Two Ways to Convert Image to Excel

MAC OCR Software

apple-ocr-for-automated-document-processing-macOS While the majority of OCR software is written for the Windows platform, a few of the major OCR engines have released versions for MacOS systems as well. Mac OCR software are often slightly more limited than their PC counterparts, and may not have the latest version of the OCR engine. However if you need to convert documents to text, Excel or searchable PDF files on your Mac, these are the best software options.

Currently, there are are professional versions of ABBYY FineReader and both pro and corporate versions of ReadIRIS available for MacOS.

When you scan a document that has text or numeric data on it, you are able to read and understand what is written in the scanned image. However, to a computer, the resulting image file is just as meaningless an assortment of pixels as a landscape photo. In order to transform this information into an editable format that you can search through, copy, and modify without retyping it manually, you will need the an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.

There is a wide variety of OCR software available. While they all share the ability to convert images of machine printed (not handwritten) text or numbers into an editable format, the various software often have different features, accuracy, prices, and language options.

Creates editable, searchable files and e-books from scans, PDFs and digital photographs. The most accurate OCR available for OSX, its unmatched recognition and conversion eliminates retyping and reformatting. Sophisticated yet remarkably intuitive, FineReader has an easy-to-use interface that makes even the most complex tasks simple.

Kofax Power PDF for Mac makes it easy to gain […]

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Compare OCR Software

OCR Freeware

About SimpleOCR Freeware

Do you dread having to retype that document you are holding in your hand? If only you had the electronic file, your life would be so much easier. With SimpleOCR, you could easily and accurately convert that paper document into editable electronic text for use in any application including Word and WordPerfect.

Not only is SimpleOCR up to 99% accurate, it is 100% free.

Download SimpleOCR now or learn more its feature and functions.

Accuracy

With optical character recognition up to 99% accurate, there is no better OCR application for the price. This increased accuracy greatly reduces the need for post-recognition proof reading and correction. And after all, isn’t that why you want to OCR the document in the first place? Of course it is!

System Requirements

SimpleOCR works on any version of windows, from Windows 95-10 and beyond! Your scanner need only a TWAIN driver, the driver that comes with a majority of all scanners sold. In short, SimpleOCR will most likely work with the PC and scanner you already have.

Pricing

SimpleOCR is free for all commercial and non-commercial purposes. It may be re-distributed freely, but only in its original, unaltered form.

Download SimpleOCR Now

Huge Dictionary – With more than 120,000 words, it is unlikely that SimpleOCR will run into a word it does not know. In the rare event that it does, our improved text editor allows you to easily add the new word to the dictionary. By adding new words to the dictionary, SimpleOCR becomes better with every use.
Attention! SimpleOCR does NOT have any handprint OCR capabilities, it will not be able to recognize handwritten text. ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition) is rather complicated software usually on a more expensive side.
Despeckle – For those documents which are not […]