Paper, as the main medium of information, is gradually losing its significance. Instead of paper documents use their electronic version, if possible. But how to convert existing archives into electronic form? To solve this problem, special programs for text recognition were created.
What are OCR programs and how do they work
These are software products that use ORC (Optical Character Recognition) or ICR (Intelligence Character Recognition) technology. These abbreviations are translated into Russian as “optical” or “intelligent character recognition”.
Programs that use OCR work as follows. A photo with text received from the scanner is divided into many fragments. For each of them, the application creates several assumptions. By checking them and comparing them with the standards, each fragment is given an estimate corresponding to the degree of coincidence. Choosing the largest of them, the program “sees” the symbol and displays it in the field of the built-in text editor.
IRC works on the same principle, but artificial neural networks are used to process characters . The main advantage of this method is the compactness of programs and lifelong learning. This allows you to efficiently recognize words written by man in handwritten letters. But this technology is not able to "read" a solid handwritten text.
Each of the existing operating systems has its own OCR programs. The most popular for working in Windows are:
- ABBYY FineReader;
- OmniPage
- Readiris
- Samsung Scan OCR Program;
In addition to PC programs, many online text recognition services are available. Among them, the most famous are FineReader Online, OnlineOCR, FreeOCR.
ABBYY FineReader 14
This software product developed by the domestic company ABBYY is one of the best among programs using OCR. The program is based on an original engine called Finereader Engine. It provides the following features:
- Fast recognition of printed text with an accuracy of more than 98%. Immunity to the quality of the original image. This allows you to equally recognize text in photographs taken with a scanner or camera.
- ADRT technology allows you to recognize not only text, but also its formatting: font, indentation, paragraphs, columns.
- Possibility of multithreaded image processing. This allows you to use all the processor cores (maximum 4) to speed up the recognition process.
- Support for more than 190 languages, including those that use an alphabet other than Latin or Cyrillic (Japanese, Chinese, Arabic).
- The built-in text editor allows you to check the recognition result or edit it.
- Interaction with Office. It allows you to export recognized text to Microsoft Word and Exel for further processing.
- Possibility of training program. This function allows you to teach the program to "read" specific letter styles. For example, a custom font or block letters written in hand.
- Work with PDF. FineReader allows you to recognize text from this type of file and “stitch” several scanned images into PDF or PDF / A.
The main disadvantage of this program is the price. A perpetual license for the basic version will cost 7 thousand rubles. The versions of "Business" and "Enterprise" are 12 and 39 thousand rubles, respectively. If you plan to use the program only at home, you can download the hacked 11th or 12th version of the product from a torrent tracker.
System requirements:
- Processor: 32-bit or 64-bit, with a clock frequency of more than 1 GHz and support for the SSE 2 instruction set. (Intel Celeron M and better, AMD Athlon 64 and better).
- RAM: 1 GB. If the processor has more than 1 core, then each additionally requires 512 MB.
- Video card: any one that supports a resolution of 1024 x 800.
- Hard disk: 3 GB - for installation and operation.
- Scanner: supporting TWAIN and WIA drivers.
- OS: Windows 7,8,8.1.1.
User reviews of FineReader 14
They respond positively to FineReader, highlighting among the advantages the ability of the product to recognize text from poor paper originals, a convenient and simple interface and high image processing speed.
Among the problems that arise when using this OCR-program, some users mention an incorrectly working image manager. For example: inadequate operation of adjusting the brightness of the scanned image.
OmniPage 18
The main competitor of FineReader in the Russian market of ORC programs. In terms of functionality, it is very similar to the opponent, but has several differences:
- Ability to start the scanning and recognition process using the scanner buttons.
- Support for 4-core processors. This allows you to reduce recognition time and convert multiple images at the same time.
- Creating your own electronic library for Kindle e-book reader (e-book).
- Automatic recognition of a recognized language.
Among the shortcomings of the program can be noted a low speed, comparable to the 10th version of FineReader, and the price for a licensed copy is $ 150.
System requirements:
- Processor: x32- or x64-bit, with a clock frequency of more than 1 GHz, Intel Pentium and better, AMD Athlon and better.
- RAM: 512 MB.
- Video card: any that supports a resolution of 1024 x 800 and a color depth of 16 bits.
- Hard disk: 1.1 GB for installation of all components and 100 MB for operation.
- Scanner: supports TWAIN, WIA, and ISIS drivers.
- OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista SP2 x32 / x64, 7.8.
User Feedback About OmniPage
They respond sharply negatively about her, because There are problems in all parts of the program, starting from a beautiful but incomprehensible interface, and ending with poor help information. The product is not adapted to work in WinXP. It can be made to work, but it will take some time.
OmniPage has recognition problems. For example: it easily recognizes plain black text on a sheet of paper with pictures or tables received from the scanner. When using images from a camera or mobile phone, recognition accuracy drops to 70%, which is very inconvenient when processing large documents.
Also, the 18th version may not start due to errors in the code. To fix this problem, you need to install the patch 18.01.
Read Iris Pro 17
Read Iris is an OCR program that, for less money (8000 versus 12,000), can compare in functionality and performance with FineReader. The professional version has the following features:
- Full-fledged work with PDF: recognition, creation of files for databases, compression and scoring of text.
- Support 140 languages.
- Recognition of paper tables and texts with the ability to export to Exel and Word.
- Receiving images from any scanner model.
There is also a corporate version that allows you to protect PDF files with watermarks and work with documents larger than 50 pages.
System requirements:
- Processor: x86 or x64, clocked at 1 GHz or higher.
- RAM: 1 GB.
- Video card: any one that supports a resolution of 1024 x 800.
- Hard disk: 400 MB for installation.
- Scanner: supporting TWAIN, WIA drivers.
- OS: Windows 7.8.10 x32 / x64.
User Feedback on ReadIris
They speak of this OCR text recognition program as a good and fast PDF to Word converter with a number of problems:
- A complex interface that is not easy for a beginner to understand.
- Automatically rescan a document when the scan area changes.
- Poor technical support.
- Sometimes a program is not activated due to errors in the program code.
Samsung Scan OCR Program - what is this program?
This is free software included in the package of 3-in-1 multifunction devices (printer, scanner, copier) from Samsung. It was developed in collaboration with Iris, which created ReadIris Pro, and is optimized to work with the MFP of this manufacturer. Samsung Scan ORC differs from the original "Ridiris" in its interface, truncated functionality and size - it takes 40 MB on the hard drive.
Online services
They are an alternative to resource-intensive stationary programs for text recognition. For example, OCR program FineReader. The properties of systems of such projects allow you to recognize text from images much faster than on a standalone PC. Among the services involved in extracting text from photos, there are 3 most convenient: FineReaderOnline, FreeOCR, OnlineOCR.
The first is a direct development of the stationary version of the product. When registering, a new user is given 10 free pages for processing and 5 each month. This restriction can be removed by purchasing an annual subscription for 3200, 5500, 17800 rubles for 2000, 5000 and 10000 pages, respectively. If the user has a license for FineReader 14, then it is enough for him to register and activate it for use in the online version. In this case, he will receive the number of pages corresponding to the type of license acquired: Standard (2000), Business (5000) or Enterprise (10000).
The OnlineOCR.com service allows you to convert 15 images / hour (restriction for unregistered users) to text and save them as .docx, .xlsx or .txt files. After registration, it becomes available:
- Saving to .pdf, .doc, .xlx, .rtf.
- Convert multi-page PDF files.
- The number of pages increases to 50.
If the pages are not enough, then they can be purchased in the amount of 50-50 000 pieces.
The FreeOCR.com project differs from the previous one in its complete free of charge and lack of restrictions on the number of pages processed. The OCR engine of this site supports Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish, Vietnamese and all European languages - only 29. The only drawback of this portal is working only with graphic images downloaded sequentially, since the processing queue is not provided for by the creators. Recognized information is displayed without any formatting in TXT format.
User Feedback on Online OCR Services
These sites are necessary in cases where downloading and installing a full-fledged ORC program is not practical. For example, to insert several voluminous quotes from a book or magazine into the abstract. Among the disadvantages of such sites, conditional free (FineReader) and weak functionality (FreeOCR, OnlineOCR) are distinguished.
Summing up, we can say that a lot of OCR-recognition programs for text with an image or PDF-files have been created, and only the most famous are given in the article. Therefore, each user will be able to choose an OCR program for the scanner in accordance with the requirements and budget. Or use one of the many free OCR services.