Tag Archives: OCR

Computers

OCR makes short work of digitizing your docs

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The file cabinet looms large in the office, yet it guards its secrets jealously…even from you. It’s time to convert those papers to space-saving, easy-to-find digital documents. For that, you need a scanner to turn them into digital images and an Optical Character Recognition program to convert those images into editable and searchable documents. I took four of the latest OCR programs and a free online OCR service for a test spin. All of them work to varying degrees.

To test the programs, I ran 22 varied and not particularly clean scans of documents—including one hand-written note—through four OCR programs and one free service. I looked for accuracy in text recognition, image extraction, and the ability to recreate them in a Word document. In addition, I processed 264 separate scans from a yearbook for output as a searchable PDF.

Free-OCR

You don’t actually need to install OCR software if you need to convert only a couple of small documents. You can use a free service such as Free-OCR (also known as Free-OCR.com) and upload a scan of your document. File size is limited to 2MB and 5000 pixels in any direction, which is about 150 dpi for a standard page. The OCR engine handles 29 languages, including English.

Free-OCR makes you jump through a CAPTCHA hoop, but does it apologetically.

Although you don’t have to register or even fork over your email address, the Free-OCR site does make you fill in one of those annoying CAPTCHAs. (Thanks, Web bad guys, for making everyone’s life more difficult.) However, those CAPTCHAs serve to remind one just how difficult OCR can be. If humans, with our incredible heuristic abilities, occasionally have problems with these, just think how poor straight-line software perusing a stream of bits must feel.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: OmniPage 18 Standard has great OCR and page reconstruction

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By default, Omnipage 18 Standard is a tad aggressive about rotating images. But you can turn this behavior off, and it did a bang-up job making an editable version of my high-school yearbook.

OmniPage 18 Standard ($150) equals Acrobat XI at outputting Word files and editable PDFs, and it also does a very good job of extracting pure text. By default, it’s a tad aggressive at rotating images trying to find text to extract. However, you can disable this behavior in the settings dialog.

OmniPage features the side-by-side comparison editing of all types of files that Acrobat’s lacks, and its interface is bit more flexible than Abbyy FineReader’s, allowing you to arrange the various panes in more ways. OmniPage, like Acrobat, also provides a batch manager for automating multiple jobs.

By default, Omnipage 18 Standard is a tad aggressive about rotating images. But you can turn this behavior off, and it did a bang-up job making an editable version of my high-school yearbook.

OmniPage 19 Ultimate is the real news for this industry stalwart. The new $500 Ultimate marries OCR with company’s speech-to-text and text-to-speech technologies from Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and starts a transition to a Windows 8-style interface. Though those aren’t strictly OCR features, it does mean the program is morphing into a jack-of-all-trades translation tool.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: Abbyy FineReader 11 Professional Edition does clean OCR and is easy to use

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Anyone who’s purchased a multifunction printer or scanner recently will probably recognize the name FineReader, as the Sprint version ships with many such products. Obviously, there are deals being made, but there’s no questioning that the program also does a very nice job of OCR. Text extraction is great, though it’s not quite as good at recreating complex documents in Word and RTF files as Acrobat or OmniPage.

Abbyy FineReader 11 Professional ($170, 15-day free trial) is straightforward and easy to use. The main window shows a list of images in a column to the far left, the image being processed in a pane next to it, and the OCR’d text and elements in a pane on the right side. This side-by-side arrangement, shared with OmniPage Standard 18, makes it super-easy to spot mistakes and compare page elements.

Abbyy FineReader 11 Professional’s easy-to-understand interface makes it easy to use even if you’re new to OCR.

Abbyy FineReader 11 is fast, recognizes text in 189 languages, and outputs in a number of different formats including editable PDFs, Microsoft Word, ePub and even open-source PDF competitor DjVu.

FineReader created a searchable PDF of my yearbook scans just fine, but like OmniPage, it was over-zealous at rotating images trying to find text until I turned off this feature. With most OCR programs, you’re better off using Windows’ own Photo Viewer to rotate scans to their correct orientation before OCR’ing.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: FreeOCR extracts text ably

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FreeOCR is a nice, simple front-end for HP’s public domain Tesseract OCR engine (now used by Google) and is roughly the installable equivalent of the unrelated Free-OCR website. It interfaces directly with scanners in addition to importing image files and extracts text into a box from which you can cut and paste. The program is extremely easy to use and works well if all you want is text. It even extracts text from PDFs, though it exports only to text.

FreeOCR’s interface is straightforward and easy to understand.

FreeOCR processes only one image at a time, but it does OCR multi-page PDFs. And, unlike the Free-OCR website, there’s no limit on file size. Also, FreeOCR can create Word and RTF documents from the text it extracts, but it’s just pasted text: There’s no attempt to reconstruct the document or place images.

Although it’s confusing, you can opt out of unwanted toolbars and a change of browser home page.

As far as it goes, FreeOCR is a neat little program, though it tries to install toolbars and reset your browser home page. You can install the program while cancelling and declining all offers, but though it’s unintuitive and the negative response buttons are grayed out.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Google Keep vs. OneNote vs. Evernote: We name the note-app winner

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Google shook things up last week when it dusted off its old Notebook service and relaunched it as Keep. Google’s new software muscles in on the space currently dominated by Microsoft OneNote and Evernote, two note-taking apps that save your text, Web links, photos, audio recordings, and more, helping to keep your life organized.

Think of these tools as sticky notes on steroids. They’re great for managing day-to-day errands and stashing rich media content, but also exceptional for organizing tasks at work.

Whether you’re about to start using a note-taking app or are considering defecting from your current choice, you must first think about the features you need most. One app may excel at OCR support and another might be best for anywhere access, while a third may be ideal for content sharing within a team. To help you make an informed decision, here’s a closer look at how Google Keep, Microsoft OneNote, and Evernote stack up in a variety of categories.

Pricing

Keep on Android

Google Keep is available online and via an Android app. Both iterations are free. OneNote and Evernote have Web and app elements that you can use for free, plus paid premium editions.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

App Spotlight: Scan business cards straight to your Salesforce account

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Of all the magical things a smartphone can do, I rank business-card OCR among the highlights.

Think of it: Instead of manually transcribing each and every card into your phone or desktop address book, you simply snap a photo and presto: an app transcribes everything for you.

Shape’s Business Card Reader has been at this game for years; as far back as 2010, PC World’s Lex Friedman noted that it “worked with impressive accuracy.”

I’ll second that: After CES last January, I used BCR on a huge stack of cards, and it worked almost flawlessly—especially on cards with light backgrounds and dark text. Talk about five bucks well spent.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Business, Finance, Occupation & Industry

Independent Research Firm Acknowledges Sonic Foundry in Video Platforms for the Enterprise Report

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

Filed under:

Independent Research Firm Acknowledges Sonic Foundry in Video Platforms for the Enterprise Report

Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform a strong performer in comprehensive video platforms report

MADISON, Wis.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Sonic Foundry, Inc. (NAS: SOFO) , the trusted cornerstone of your enterprise, campus and event video content management and webcasting strategy,was among the select companies that Forrester Research, Inc. invited to participate in its report, The Forrester Wave™: Video Platforms for the Enterprise, Q1 2013.

Sonic Foundry, the decade-long leader in academic video capture, believes that its appearance in the report reaffirms the company’s recent evolution to Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform and solidly establishes Mediasite as a recognized solution for comprehensive video content management. Mediasite Enterprise Video Platform provides enterprises and campuses an integrated approach for creating, managing and distributing all video-based content. It allows users to import any video, regardless of where or how it was created or recorded, and transform it into rich video that is indexed, searched, secured and played back on any device from desktops and tablets to smart phones.

According to Forrester, “Sonic Foundry‘s portal applications and video player provide an excellent user experience, and its media capture appliances simplify webcast recording. Sonic Foundry has expanded beyond webcasting with the recent introduction of its desktop recorder and the addition of features to manage video content other than webcasts.”

Forrester evaluated 23 criteria of enterprise video platform vendors. Sonic Foundry scored a perfect 5 out of 5 points in the webcasting features category, and scored 4 out of 5 possible points in search and metadata support, workflow, video file ingest options and security categories.

“Customers like the simplified operation and turnkey functionality of Madison, Wisconsin-based Sonic Foundry‘s media recording appliances to synchronize content. They also like the rich playback experience for viewers. Sonic Foundry is unique in providing OCR [optical character recognition] to automatically index the text in slides, which makes it easy to search for specific webcast content. It is focused now on becoming more multipurpose. Sonic Foundry added a desktop recorder feature to support user-generated content uploads without its media recording appliances,” the report states.

“Sonic Foundry is pleased to have been cited as a strong performer in video platforms for the enterprise by Forrester in their first report on the space. I believe that to be recognized at this early stage in our video content management strategy is further validation that we know what is required for scalable, widespread adoption of content creation and …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

App Spotlight: FineReader Touch brings multi-lingual OCR scanning to iOS

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There are plenty of apps that can turn your phone into the equivalent of a mobile scanner, using the camera to take snapshots of various documents, then letting you file and/or share those documents.

Ah, but what if you need more than just scanning and sharing? ABBYY’s FineReader Touch for iOS performs OCR on the fly, converting printed documents into text you can edit, search, and more.

This isn’t the first app to offer such convenience, but it may be the most multi-lingual one: FineReader Touch supports an impressive 42 languages, from Abkhazian to Ukrainian. In fact, it supports up to three different languages in the same document.

For anyone who routinely works with international clients, that could be a boon indeed. (Note that the app doesn’t translate foreign-language documents; it can simply convert them to text in those native languages.)

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: Epson WorkForce WF-3540 All-in-One Printer

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If you’re looking for a small office inkjet MFP with a comprehensive feature set that will handle more than minimal volume printing, the $200 (as of
2/1/2013) Epson WorkForce WF-3540 is a good place to begin. It’s quick, and the output looks nice. Equipped with automatic duplex printing and scanning,
500 sheets of capacity, relatively affordable ink, and easy controls, it’s quite the bargain. It also connects via USB, Ethernet, or Wi-Fi so you can use it
in virtually any computing environment.

Installing the WorkForce WF-3540 is a mere matter of a few dialogs and about 5 minutes. As mentioned, you can connect to it wirelessly, via Ethernet, or
directly using USB. The software bundle includes the trusty Epson Scan and Abbyy Finereader Sprint 9.5 for OCR. The control panel features a 3.5-inch LCD
with contextually lit touch buttons on the panel surrounding it. The menu structure is quite easy to navigate–far easier to use than its WorkForce WF-2540
cousin we recently reviewed.

Paper handling on the WorkForce WF-3540 is top-notch. In addition to two bottom-mounted, 250-sheet paper cassettes, there’s a single-sheet rear feed for
photo paper, envelopes and the like. Tip: Push the paper down into the rear feeder until you feel it grab; the paper sits farther down than with most
printers.

The scanner features an automatic document feeder (ADF) which scans both sides automatically (by re-feed). The lid to the letter/A4-sized platen doesn’t
telescope to accommodate thicker materials, but that’s the only issue, and a minor one for an office-oriented MFP.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Review: Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One Printer

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The Epson Expression Photo XP-850 Small-in-One Printer’s talents may lean toward photos, but along with the superior image quality, it’s also a full-featured, fairly fast color inkjet multifunction (MFP) with automatic duplex printing and scanning. Its $300 price (as of 01/22/2013) is steep, but it includes other premium features, like CD/DVD printing.

The Expression Photo XP-850 is generally a joy to use. Setup is easy, and the touchscreen and contextually lit buttons, plus nicely thought-out menus, make operation simple. The software is the current standard Epson bundle that includes the company’s venerable Epson Scan, as well as Abbyy FineReader 9.5 Sprint for OCR chores. There’s also mobile printing via e-mail and Wi-Fi. By ‘generally a joy’ we mean that one of these first days, Epson needs to fix a long-standing push-scan issue. This is at least our third printer from the company that has required either tweaking the Windows firewall, or waiting for a number of minutes, before PCs on the network will show up as scan destinations. No other vendor’s printers suffer this issue.

Paper and media handling are top-notch for small volumes. Duplex printing is automatic, and augmenting the 100-sheet main paper cassette and 20-sheet photo cassette is a rear, single-sheet vertical feed that allows straight-path (no bending) photo printing. The automatic document feeder (ADF) holds 30 sheets and supports automatic two-sided scanning. The scanning platen itself is letter/A4-sized, and the lid telescopes a small distance to accommodate magazine-thick media. Optical media may be on its way out for some, but on the bottom of the Expression Photo XP-850, you’ll find a removable adapter for feeding printable CD or DVD media. The adapter inserts into a slot above the 50-sheet output tray.

Before we quote speeds, note that upping the photo-printing setting from ‘Photo’ to ‘Best Photo’ slows output to a glacial pace, with little improvement in quality. At default settings, monochrome text and graphic pages print at an aggregate 7.1 pages per minute (ppm) on the PC and 6.8 ppm on the Mac—average times. Snapshot-sized (4-by-6-inch) photos print at above-average speeds of 4.6 ppm to plain paper and 1.6 ppm to glossy paper. A full-page color photo prints at about 0.4 ppm–a shade slower than average.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld